Gianni Motta's Tours de France

Tour de France 1965, Gianni Motta : “Before the Romandie I was hit by a press car, it broke my knee and ran over my leg. I was in a cast for a month, I even missed the Giro d'Italia. I started again. In about twenty days I accumulated a thousand kilometers, four days of racing at the Midi Libre in France winning a stage, another race that didn't even finish, and I showed up at the start of the Tour in a mixed team, half Molteni and half Ignis, where each half did its own race. I went without pretensions, without hopes, without illusions. It was Giorgio Albani, my sports director at Molteni, who insisted. We were young and strong, carefree. And I liked the idea of ​​racing the Tour”.

Dorsal number 115: “The first stage was divided into two half-stages, the first in a line, from Cologne to Liège, seventh, the second in a team time trial, in Liège, and here in 22 kilometers we lost almost 7 minutes. Tour already over? No way, the Tour had just begun. Stage after stage, I regained confidence. I collected placings: third in the individual time trial in Chateaulin, third in the Pyrenean stage in Bagnères-des-Bigorre with Aubisque and Tourmalet , second in the Alpine stage in Briançon with Vars and Izoard, second in the final time trial in Paris. I had regained my form, I finished on a high and climbed onto the podium , third behind Felice Gimondi and Raymond Poulidor ”.

He was 22 years old: “And up until that day I had only taken part in two major stage races, the 1963 Giro del Valle d'Aosta as an amateur and the 1964 Giro d'Italia as a neo-professional. I knew little or nothing, in fact, nothing. But it was at that Tour that I began to learn. The hard way. On the day of the Ventoux I insisted on following Julio Jimenez, a formidable Spanish climber. I responded to his every move, while the others climbed at their own pace, letting him vent. Until I blew up. The Ventoux terrifies with its volcanic and desert-like appearance, the heat that doubles and bounces off the stones. Instead I ended up in the first part, the one in the woods. I was short of breath, among the exhaust pipes of cars and motorbikes, among swarms of horseflies and clouds of midges. And the feeling that everyone was running against me. A two-man breakaway with Poulidor. We had a couple of minutes' advantage. A good opportunity, excellent, for both of us. But he didn't shoot. I invited him, I urged him, I begged him, I grabbed him by the shirt. In the end I told him: now I understand why you are the eternal second. But he said nothing. And we were caught again”.

The Tour is a squeeze of life: “We had fun, we were content. We took what the convent gave: stages, transfers, hotels. I looked younger than I was, they considered me a child, my companions – it was better to have them cheerful than sulky – protected me. Giacomo Fornoni, the Maestro, was a pushy madman, Giuseppe Fezzardi, the Pepp, a more moderate madman, Pietro Scandelli, who wasn't at that Tour, a normal madman. Real riders were all a bit mad, otherwise they wouldn't have become riders . And Ernesto Colnago wasn't just the team's mechanic , but the factotum , capable of solving problems of any kind. Every evening at the table was a cinema. Only when racing did things get serious. And even the old men of the Italian group considered me a child, from Baldini to Nencini, from Carlesi to Ciampi: I felt that they loved me”.

Third place gave Motta the awareness of his own qualities: “In that 1965 Tour I built the victory at the 1966 Giro . The lessons continued immediately after Paris. While Gimondi celebrated the victory with meetings and races in Italy, I did it with circuits and kermesses - often on the cobblestones - in Belgium. Day or night, short but intense, we raced with a knife under the saddle and we wrung our necks as if they were all world championships”.

Motta would return to the Tour de France in 1971: “I was riding for Salvarani, Gimondi’s team, but Gimondi wasn’t there. I started well, I won the leader’s jersey in the mountains classification, I was sixth in the general classification, in the Grenoble stage I fell, I got back on my bike, I finished the stage with difficulty, 150 kilometers of extraordinary pain, excruciating on the descents when I had to brake, in the hospital an X-ray showed nothing, but my hand was swollen, it hurt just to rest it on the handlebars, I withdrew amidst some criticism, in Italy another hospital and another X-ray, broken scaphoid, another month in a cast”.

More on these topics: