So much going on in this photo of the Italian star Fiorenzo Magni. First of all, what’s he holding between his teeth?
Magni crashed on stage 12 of the 1956 Giro d’Italia and broke his right collar bone. He continued racing, pain was something Magni could handle, what he couldn’t handle though was being uncompetitive. He couldn’t pull on his handlebars with his right arm, so Magni’s mechanic cut an inner tube of an old tyre, tied one end to Magni’s handlebars, and when Magni needed extra leverage he put the other end between his teeth and pulled on that.
The other big thing is his jersey, or rather it’s sponsor, Nivea. Nivea – yes the face cream manufacturer - was Magni’s personal sponsor long before it sponsored a team, but by doing so it helped save Italian pro cycling.
Before the Second World War far more bikes were manufactured than cars, and there were more bikes on Italian roads even in the early 1950s. But then the re-birth of the Italian engineering industry took hold, and the country entered a more modern age. People wanted cars and scooters, not bikes.
The Italian cycling industry began to suffer with dwindling sales, and sponsoring a cycling team became a big drain on the bottom line. People still loved watching big races, but they weren’t buying bikes, so company accountants started questioning team sponsorship to advertise something fewer people wanted to buy? A crisis loomed.
That’s when Fiorenzo Magni had the idea of asking Nivea to sponsor a team. They made a deal with the Swiss bike manufacturer Fuchs, and for the first time a pro cycling team was sponsored by a business outside the sport.
It was a big deal because in many respects Magni was the ‘third man’ of the golden era of Italian cycling. Unfortunate perhaps to have had his career at the same time as Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi, Magni was a man of threes. He won the Tour of Flanders three times in a row (1949-1951), the Giro d’Italia three times (1948, 1951 and 1955), and he was Italian national champion three times (1951, 1953 and 1954).
