Thursday, Jun. 24, 2004

Cycling's Mountain Madonna

A thousand years ago, in the wooded hills above Bellagio, where cypresses sweep down to meet Lake Como as it branches into Lake Lecco, the Count of Ghisallo was out hunting when he was set upon by brigands. Fleeing for his life, the Count sought divine mercy at a roadside shrine to the Virgin Mary and, according to legend, was miraculously spared. The details of his escape are lost, but we can be sure it didn't involve a bike. Yet centuries later, the Madonna del Ghisallo was named the patron saint of cyclists, and ever since, pilgrims have been pedaling up the mountain to this spot to ask her to "protect us along the roads, relieve us from dangers and lead us to safety." And, the pro cyclists can't help but add, to victory.

For a commuting cyclist in London, life can get scary. What with the potholes and the scant regard for safety that leaves us to mix it with buses and trucks, I've come to rely on my senses instead. Wearing a helmet feels more like an act of desperation than faith, so I rarely bother. I'd prefer the patronage of road planners to saints any day, but a little divine intervention wouldn't go amiss.

So to the town of Bergamo, in the heart of Lombardy, where I meet up with Lawrie and Natalie Cranley from Brisbane, Australia, who run Bikestyle Tours, catering to enthusiastic road riders who want to get close to the action of cycling's premier races: the Tour de France, Spain's Vuelta and, here, in its closing stages, the Giro d'Italia. I explain to the 17-strong tour group my plan to cycle up to the Madonna del Ghisallo. Their knowing smiles — they've just come back — turn to grins when I tell them I've lugged my hefty mountain bike along for the ride.

The road from Bellagio to the Madonna's sanctuary is a mere 9 km but the climb is a tough one, with an average grade of more than 10% that hits 14% on some stretches (imagine walking up a high-rise in lead boots). Pro riders make the 754-m ascent in less than 25 minutes. It takes me twice as long. If I had any to spare, the views of Lake Como would take my breath away, so I pause a few times to gasp instead — and to fight the prospect of parting company with the custard brioche I ate for breakfast. At last, penance done and righteous joy already kicking in, I reach the sun-drenched plateau of Mount Ghisallo and its tiny chapel.

It's still only 9:15 on a Sunday morning, but already the place is thronged with local club cyclists who linger for a few minutes in the chapel, cross themselves, remount and allow sweet gravity to suck them down the mountain. Inside the chapel, built in 1623 around the painted icon of the Virgin Mother, Don Luigi Farina, parish priest and rector here since 1985, recounts its history. Thanks to the legend, the shrine was already a blessed place for travelers, and when cyclists first began testing their legs on Ghisallo, it was only natural they would pause here. In 1948 Don Ermelindo Viganò, the chapel's canny rector, persuaded Pope Pius XII to dedicate the building to cyclists, and a year later to appoint this Madonna as the patron saint of Italian cyclists. (As cyclists' only bona fide protectress, her coverage is global, Don Farina is quick to reassure me.) In truth, though, her chapel is as much a shrine to Italy's many cycling champions, and two in particular: Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi. The pair dominated cycling in the postwar era and provided Italians with an enormous psychological lift. Don Farina reels off the names of other champions like a Latin prayer: Magni, Motta, Gimondi, Chiappucci, Saronni, Gavazzi. Barely an inch of the walls and rafters is unadorned by pledges of their faith in the Madonna's protection: autographed race jerseys, pennants, photos and bikes from across the decades. That faith is sometimes tested. "There are many who die on the roads, hit by cars, or who fall," says Don Farina, indicating the damaged bike frame of Fabio Casartelli, a teammate of Lance Armstrong and a Como native who died in a pileup during the '95 Tour de France.

"Oh, Bartali! … Oh, Coppi!," coos a group of elderly Italian ladies, squinting and pointing at the ranks of miniature votive photos that stud the walls. Bartali, the Tuscan-born winner of two Tours de France and three Giros d'Italia, was a devout Catholic who set up shrines in his hotel bedroom; Coppi, a Piedmontese atheist who won two Tours and five Giros, was scandalously devoted to a married woman and chose amphetamines over prayer. Yet both were idolized, and the elevation of Ghisallo and the Madonna was a shrewd kind of coincidence: 1948 and 1949 were the years when first Bartali and then Coppi won the Tour, and each gave his bike to the chapel.

This year's Giro is haunted by a Coppi-like errant hero: Marco Pantani, who in 1998 became the first Italian since Coppi to win both the Giro and the Tour de France in one year, but was suspended the following year for doping. In February, Pantani died of an overdose of cocaine, a drug in which he took refuge when the sport made him a pariah, according to his faithful fans. Some 80,000 of them crowded the hillside near his hometown of Cesenatico as the Giro passed, many in yellow Pantani shirts and waving skull-and-crossbones flags to honor the rider nicknamed "Il Pirata." Back in Bergamo, the 140 riders of the 87th Giro d'Italia swoop through the town in close formation like a colorful flock of starlings. Heading for the finish line in Milan, they're gone in 20 seconds, but promenading now, the race all but won by a new idol in the making, Damiano Cunego, the 22-year-old first-timer from Verona, who'd smashed the field in the Dolomite mountains days earlier.

Home again in London, the potholes feel like old friends, the hills like speed bumps. I'm grateful for the company of the Madonna, whose medallion is now clipped to my bike stem, but I've taken to wearing my helmet again — just in case.