Road to Valor

April 23, 2012
Journalist Alli McConnon and historical researcher Andres McConnon uncover the untold story of Italian bicycle racing legend Gino Bartali’s secret work during WWII saving Jews from the Holocaust. The sister-and-brother team describe Bartali’s rise from humble origins in a village outside of Florence to international sports stardom as a two-time winner of bicycle racing’s ultimate challenge, the Tour de France. They perfectly recreate the excitement of his 1948 Tour victory. With rioting in the wake of the attempted assassination of the head of Italy’s Communist Party, many believe that Bartali’s victory united Italians and prevented civil war. But the authors’ primary focus is on Bartali’s dangerous and secret work as a courier for a network that protected Italian Jews from the Nazis during the war, making this account much more than just another sports biography. At the request of Florence’s antifascist archbishop, Elia Dalla Cpsta, who wanted to aid Jewish refugees flooding into the city, Bartali carried false identity documents and photos through numerous police and military checkpoints under the guise of “training” rides. Based mostly on Italian primary sources and hundreds of hours of interviews, this thoroughly documented biography is both inspiring and immensely enjoyable. Photos, maps. Agent: Peter McGuigan, Foundry Literary & Media.

April 15, 2012
Mostly uplifting account of the Tuscan champion cyclist whose prime was ruptured by the advent of World War II. The extent of Gino Bartali's work as a courier of forged documents for Jews hiding in Tuscany has only recently gained the cyclist, who died in 2000, humanitarian recognition. The scrappy laborer's son was 24 when he won his first Tour de France in 1938, his best years subsequently interrupted by military service when war broke out and Mussolini's Italy was allied with Nazi Germany, yet he made his incredible comeback and won the race again for a war-defeated Italy in 1948. The McConnons--former BusinessWeek writer Aili and filmmaker Andres--have sifted through the archives and interviewed Bartali's widow, family and former teammates. With his simple peasant beginnings in the Tuscan village of Ponte a Ema, Bartali and his younger brother, Giulio, found in cycling races around their native mountains an opportunity for distinction and money. After winning the Giro d'Italia in 1936, Bartali almost quit racing following Giulio's fatal accident, but meeting the young woman who would become his wife, Adriana Bani, encouraged him to strive on, and he won another Giro in 1937. He was manipulated by Mussolini's national sports directors to concentrate solely on the Tour de France; however, because of his alliance with the Catholic Church, even his 1938 win received muted response by the government. He did not speak about his war efforts, helping the church shuttle counterfeit documents for the flood of Jewish refugees into Florence in 1943; they were hidden in his bike while he was ostensibly training up and down the hills. The authors interweave the plight of one saved family, the Goldenbergs, within the Bartali narrative. A workmanlike biography that fills in some of the gaps of this strange, troubling time.

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June 1, 2012
Gino Bartali (19142000), the Italian cyclist, won the Tour de France twice, in 1938 and again a decade later. His name is familiar to cycling enthusiasts around the world, but he's considerably less well known for his other passion: working with the Italian Resistance to save the lives of Jews during WWII. With interviews with Bartali's family and friends, and anchored by solid research into the events of the period, the book tells a dramatic and moving story that is virtually unknown to most readers. (The similar heroics of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg are widely known, but Bartali insisted that his own war efforts remain a secret, and it wasn't until after his death that the story began to emerge.) The authors trace Bartali's life from his early days as a young boy with a single-minded dreamto own a bicycle of his very ownto his later years as a world-renowned cycling champion and unsung war hero. An important addition to WWII biography and also to the history of twentieth-century cycling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)