Faema

Sponsored by an Italian coffee machine company, the Faema team went on to win every major race with some of cycling’s most notable names

- Words Giles Belbin Photography Getty Images

Monte Bondone, 8th June [1956]. A drama, a real drama, a shocking spectacle. From Trento to Monte Bondone, the snow: a few flakes 6km from the top, then the storm. It had rained all day, the cold and wet wind had not managed to sweep from the top of the Dolomite passes a heavy haze of fog. An horrendous atmosphere, the riders seemed like ghosts, their faces were frightening, one twist after another in an impressive crescendo. Falls, sensational withdrawals... the stage seems to blur, the riders no longer have individual faces, they have only one that is the same for everyone, that of the spasm that torments them. Trento to the Bondone are 16km of uphill, which would be hard in the sun, in the snow it is a torture.’

So started Gigi Boccacini’s report on Stage 20 of the 1956 Giro d’Italia in the pages of La Stampa. It had been -4°C at the top of a sodden Monte Bondone that day. Those lining the road were suffering enough - ‘with chattering teeth, fans and journalists in summer clothes shiver, we are back in the middle of winter’ - let alone the numbed riders who had spent a large part of the preceding 230km getting soaked. Forty-six riders abandoned, opting to take refuge in farmhouses or bars instead of continuing amid ‘the violence of the weather in the most dramatic cycling race of all time’.

One rider who did not seek the sanctuary and warmth of a bar that day was the Luxembourger Charly Gaul. Gaul had started the day 24th on GC, more than 16 minutes behind race leader Pasquale Fornara. But after a chaotic stage in which the lead changed hands repeatedly, Gaul found himself alone at the head of the race when he reached Trento for the start of the ascent of Monte Bondone.