In Praise Of...The Tifosi

Italy’s cycling fans have a passion and pride that makes them stand out from the crowd.

- Trevor Ward

Stephen Roche’s experience of the tifosi was wildly different from my own. Around the same time as he was being punched, abused and spat at by fans as he raced to victory in the 1987 Giro, I was being blown kisses by a bikini-clad beauty riding pillion on a Vespa as it overtook me on a coast road near La Spezia.

Roche’s crime was to take the pink jersey from his Carrera teammate, national hero and defending champion Roberto Visentini. I’d been merely riding my pannier-laden touring bike at a sedate pace in the direction of Sicily. A few weeks later, as I toiled up a climb in the Apennines in the heat of the midday sun, a clapped-out Fiat pulled up alongside me and the grubby-vested farm labourer in the passenger seat handed me a brick-sized sandwich through the window. With cheery shouts of ‘Ciao, Coppi!’ the van lurched forwards, leaving me at the roadside to enjoy the best salami panini of my life.

The tifosi mirror everything that is scary and wonderful about Italy, from the chaos and clamour of its politics to the peace and serenity of its landscapes via the pomp and ceremony of its Catholicism. They reflect the traits of a nation that only became unified in 1861 and that has been ruled by a succession of monarchs, dictators, socialists, liberals and dysfunctional coalitions ever since.