page_title: Gino Bartali
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Gino Bartali / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: The cyclist Gino Bartali posing with his wife Adriana and their children Andrea and Luigi. Florence, March 1963
context_page_description: Gino Bartali Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI, nicknamed Gino the Pious and Ginettaccio, was a champion road cyclist. He was the most renowned Italian cyclist before the Second World War, having won the Giro d'Italia twice, in 1936 and 1937, and the Tour de France in 1938. After the war, he added one more victory in each event: the Giro d'Italia in 1946 and the Tour de France in 1948. His second and last Tour de France victory in 1948 gave him the largest gap between victories in the race.
  In September 2013, 13 years after his death, Bartali was recognised as a "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem for his efforts to aid Jews during World War II.
context_section_description: Bartali grew up in a religious family in Tuscany, and his belief earned him the nickname "Gino the Pious". He prayed before meals and resented when teammates swore. In contrast, Coppi grew up in Piedmont in the north and was not religious at all. Bartali was proud that Pope John XXIII had asked him to teach him to ride a bicycle. He made no secret that he supported the Catholic-leaning Christian Democratic Party but his personality ensured that he was forgiven by the rival communists. Tim Hilton wrote: "Bartali was a genuinely religious man, making his devotions public and, in return, becoming the Vatican's favourite sportsman – he was personally blessed by three popes. He would set up shrines in his hotel bedrooms when he rode the Giro and the Tour de France, and, on some mountains, children from summer camps sang canticles as he pedalled past, a priest conducting their infant worship."
  Bartali was frequently pessimistic. One of his customary phrases was "Everything's wrong; we'll have to start all over again." The best the historian Pierre Chany could say of him was that while he often boasted of what he had done on mountains when nobody was there to see him, he had the grace never to tell the story differently.
  Bartali lived at 173 via Chiantigiana, Florence in a home full of souvenirs. His wife died in 2014 aged 94.
caption: Bartali with wife Adriana Bani and sons Andrea and Luigi Bartali in 1963
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