Career
Born in Novi Ligure (province of Alessandria, Piedmont), Costante Girardengo turned professional in 1913 at the age of 20 for the Maino-Dunlop team after impressing as an amateur the previous year by finishing runner up in the Tour of Tuscany. He met with immediate success winning a stage in the Giro d’Italia (his first of 30 stage wins in the Giro) and becoming Italian road race champion. He repeated these successes in 1914 and also took his first of his five wins in Milano–Torino. 1914 saw Girardengo win the longest ever stage in the Giro d'Italia, a 430 kilometre leg between Lucca and Rome. Later that same year Girardengo took part in the Tour de France for the only time in his career, riding as a guest for the Automoto team he crashed several times in stages five and six and abandoned the race. 1915 saw him take another win in Milano–Torino but Milan – San Remo resulted in disappointment when he was disqualified after winning the race for going off course.
Much of the professional cycle racing was stopped after 1915 because of the First World War and it was not until 1918 that Girardengo took another win, taking the first of his six victories in Milan – San Remo, a record which Eddy Merckx eventually eclipsed over 50 years later. He also finished in the first three of the same race every year from 1917 to 1926 and was first over the Turchino Pass on five occasions. His post 1918 form was all the more remarkable as during the First World War Girardengo had contracted Spanish flu and nearly died, his manager believing a survivor of that disease could not race properly refused at one point to renew his licence.
Girardengo took the first of his Giro d’Italia wins in 1919 (including seven stage wins), however his form in the Giro was not always good and he abandoned the race in the early stages in 1920, 1921 and 1922 before dominating in 1923. 1923 was undoubtedly Girardengo’s best year with 16 victories, he took his second Giro d’Italia win including eight of the ten stages as well as many of the top Italian one day races. Despite racing in Italy for most of his career, Girardengo had a burning desire to win Paris–Roubaix, he first raced there in 1921 but he was unlucky on several occasions, breaking his bike when well placed and never coming close to winning. In 1924 Girardengo won the GP Wolber in France, then regarded as the unofficial World Championship.
Girardengo finished runner up in the inaugural World Championship road race held on the Nürburgring in Germany in 1927, the four man Italian team also included Alfredo Binda, Gaetano Belloni and Domenico Piemontesi, the Italians worked perfectly as a team with Binda breaking away 20 miles from the finish to win comfortably, the Italians filled the first four places on that rainy day in Germany. He took his sixth win in Milan – San Remo in 1928 and this was his last big victory on the road although he continued riding until the 1936 season when he retired at the age of 43.
After his retirement Girardengo became involved as a coach of the professional Maino team. He also became the head coach of the Italian national squad for a time, advising Gino Bartali when he won the 1938 Tour de France. Later on he gave his name “Girardengo” to a brand of motorbikes manufactured between 1951 and 1954 in the northern Italian city of Alessandria.
He has been immortalised in Italian popular culture through the critically acclaimed song "Il Bandito e il Campione" by Francesco De Gregori that juxtaposes his life with that of his childhood friend the notorious bandit and outlaw Sante Pollastri.
He died in 1978 at Cassano Spinola, just outside Novi Ligure, at the age of 84.
Read more about this topic: Costante Girardengo
Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)