IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

The myth of Fausto Coppi explained by his son

How do you approach the myth? How do you talk about one of the greatest champions of all times without being trivial? More than sixty years after his untimely death, Fausto Coppi is still an indelible presence in the memory of a nation and a sport, cycling, which in his time had begun to fly thanks to the feats of those who will be remembered forever as heroes. And Coppi, of those heroes was the greatest. Romantic hero, with that neorealist actor look. Style hero. Before him, cyclists were only rudimentary athletes. His grace, his ways and his precise ideas in terms of dressing and his presence even outside the competitions helped to create the collective consciousness of a people that began to spread its wings, like a heron, not surprisingly one of the nicknames of the Campionissimo.

Coppi in this case is the ferryman of a post-war Italy towards an idea of Sport with a capital S, a Sport to which everyone paid unprecedented attention, even more popular than football back then. An attention that has never subsided, which is still alive today more than ever and seems to have a bright future ahead of it.

Through the words of his son, Fausto Angelo Coppi, “Faustino” for his friends, the short movie produced by De Marchi traces the life of the cyclist from Castellania in an intimate and sincere way, explaining with the simplicity of a spontaneous conversation how his myth has survived time and fashions and sheds light on an interesting anecdote about the world champion jersey handmade for him by Elda De Marchi in 1953 and found seventy years later, almost by chance. A temporal bridge between the past, present and future of cycling clothing.