1952, Giro d'Italia and Tour de France again


After all the accidents and the tragedy occurred in 1951, Fausto Coppi wants a better year and works hard to make things go better.
He trains carefully and starts racing very soon, in the Six Days of Paris taking place in March.
He comes second in the Paris-Roubaix: he first leads a fascinating sprint with Kubler and Van Steenbergen, then looses the very final sprint against the Belgian rider, Van Steenbergen.

Then it's the turn of the Giro d'Italia, starting on May 17th. In the fifth stage - a time trial stage- he already wears the Maglia Rosa but the most important part of this Giro, as it has happened in the past, takes place in mountains.
Fausto Coppi sprints ahead in the stage going from Venice to Bolzano, through the mountain passes of Falzarego, Pordoi and Sella.
Raphael Geminiani and Hugo Koblet try to keep Coppi's pace in vain. Coppi arrives to Bolzano with a leap of 5 minutes on Gino Bartali and Fiorenzo Magni and 5 minutes and 50 seconds on Geminiani and the others.
Fausto Coppi wins another time trial stage and wins his fourth Giro d'Italia, while his team-mate Raphaël Géminiani, wins the Gran Premio della Montagna.

Now comes the Tour. Because of a series of controversies between Coppi and Bartali, the authorities starts thinking about excluding all the Italian competitors from the race.
Fortunately Alfredo Binda (the Italian National Team manager) composes the fights and the Italian team is admitted to the Tour. Once again, the result of the race depends on the stages in the mountains.
Fausto Coppi is the leader of all the stages in the Alps: he wins the first one, with the climb of the Alpe d'Huez. He wins again in Switzerland and the stage going from Bourg d'Oisans to Sestrière, leaving the second behind for 7 minutes and Bartali, the third, for more than 10 minutes.

In the same year Fausto Coppi repeats the exploit winning the Giro and the Tour being the first man in the world to achieve such a result. Bad luck does not abandon him: in August he falls during a track-race and breaks the left shoulder blade.

He comes back to the races in October, just in time to win the Lugano Grand Prix, a time trial race and the Mediterranean Grand Prix, a road-race in stages located in the South of Italy.