Often cited as the rider closest to challenging Eddy Merckx for the honorific title of the best rider in road racing’s history, Fausto Coppi undoubtedly had more influence on the sport than not only the Belgian but any other racer. Transformative in his approach to every aspect of cycling, including diet, training, drug taking, equipment, tactics and team organisation, Coppi established a method that his peers and rivals were quick to follow and that remained in place for decades after his premature death in 1960.
“There is someone avant-garde in every field, and Coppi was the avant-garde of cycling,” his team-mate Raphaël Geminiani told journalist William Fotheringham in Fallen Angel, the author’s biography of the Italian. “First he got to know himself, how far he could go physically, then everything…
