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The Mysterious Death Of Ottavio Bottecchia

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
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I enjoy cycling, though I'm not passionate about it. A couple of days ago I became aware of the life and mysterious death of Ottavio Bottecchia, an Italian cyclist who twice won the Tour de France in the Twenties, but ended his days dying alone at the roadside with a fractured skull. How?

Bottecchia was born as the eighth child of a poor family of nine children. He went to school for just a year, first working as a shoemaker, then as a bricklayer.

220px-Ottavio_Bottecchia_1923.jpg


Bottecchia later married and had three children.

Despite being a convinced socialist with anti-Fascist convictions, Bottecchia joined the Bersaglieri corps of the Italian army during the first world war. For four years he ferried messages and supplies on the Austrian front with a special folding bicycle. During the conflict he contracted malaria and also had to evade capture several times. Bottecchia endured a gas attack on 3 November 1917 after the battle of Caporetto while providing covering fire for retreating forces. Near Sequals he was captured, but escaped while being marched into captivity at night. After returning to Italian lines, he twice conducted reconnaissance sorties into Austrian-held areas, which by now included his home region of Colle Umberto. Bottecchia was later awarded a bronze medal for valor.

Bottecchia returned to Italy where he took up competitive cycling. He won the Giro del Piave, the Coppa della Vittoria, and the Duca D'Aosta in 1920 and the Coppe Gallo an Osimo, the Circuito del Piave and the Giro del Friuli in 1921.

Bottecchia became a professional cyclist in 1920.

The new recruit reported for duties with his new team in France, said the writer Pierre Chany, with a skin tanned like an old leather saddle and creases to his face deep enough to be scars. His clothing was ragged and his shoes so old that they no longer had any shape. His ears stuck out so far that the Tour organiser, Henri Desgrange referred to him as "butterfly".

“The only words of French he could manage were: "No bananas, lots of coffee, thank you."

It was as a professional that Bottecchia learned to read.

In 1924 Bottecchia won the first stage of the Tour and kept his lead to the end, the first Italian to win. He wore his yellow jersey all the way to Milan in the train – travelling third class to save money.

“By then his French had improved to: "Not tired, French and Belgians good friends, cycling good job."

Bottecchia won the Tour again in 1925 with the help of Lucien Buysse, who served as the first domestique in Tour history. Accused in 1924 of winning without trying, Bottecchia won the first, sixth, seventh and final stage. He was never the same after that and dropped out, "weeping like a child", during a thunderstorm in 1926.

On 3 June 1927, a farmer outside the village of Peonis, near Bottecchia's home, found him on the roadside. His skull was cracked, one collarbone and other bones broken. His bike lay some distance away on the verge and wasn't damaged. There were no skid marks to suggest a car had forced him off the road and no marks to the pedals or handlebar tape to suggest he'd lost control.

Bottecchia was carried to an inn and laid on a table. A priest gave him the last rites. From there he was taken by cart to hospital in Gemona. He died there on June 14, twelve days later, without regaining consciousness.

Theories abound about the circumstances of his death. Bernard Chambaz of L'Humanité said:

Accident or assassination? The accident theory, favoured by justice, on the accounts of witnesses and a medical examination which also referred to several fractures, was based on an assumption of an illness, sunstroke and a fall. In fact, the inquiry was quickly closed. The theory suited everybody: the Mussolini régime, the presumed killer and even – it's sad to say – the family, now sure of a large insurance payout.
Don Dantė Nigris, the priest who gave him the last rites, is said to have attributed the death to Fascists unhappy about Bottecchia's more liberal leanings. But an Italian dying from stab wounds on a New York waterfront claimed he had been employed as a hit man. He named a supposed godfather, although nobody of the name was ever found.

Much later, the farmer who had found him said on his deathbed: "I saw a man eating my grapes. He'd pushed through the vines and damaged them. I threw a rock to scare him, but it hit him. I ran to him and realised who it was. I panicked and dragged him to the roadside and left him. God forgive me!"

220px-Trasaghis_Monumento_Bottecchia_01112007_02.jpg


Monument to Bottecchia at Trasaghis by the Tagliamento river

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottavio_Bottecchia

maximus otter
 
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The most Fortean thing about this story, IMHO, is that he contracted malaria while crossing the border between Italy and Austria. (Or did I read that wrong?)

Thanks for posting his life story though—he sounds like he was a valiant and talented human being who turned what could have been a desperate existence into something wonderful.
 
The most Fortean thing about this story, IMHO, is that he contracted malaria while crossing the border between Italy and Austria. (Or did I read that wrong?)

Thanks for posting his life story though—he sounds like he was a valiant and talented human being who turned what could have been a desperate existence into something wonderful.

It doesn't explicitly say where he contracted the disease, but it is worth noting (as I discovered while studying the Italian Campaign in the Second World War) that, for the first half of the twentieth century Italy was one of the most notorious countries in Europe for malaria with between 15,000 and 20,000 deaths per year (from around 2 million cases). There was a major outbreak immediately after the Armistice and despite a few localised programmes, they only really got a grip on the problem with the import of DDT after the Second World War. It was finally declared to have been eradicated in 1971.

Bottecchia could easily have been on leave on in transit elsewhere in the country when exposed, farther south, most likely.

My grandfather's first overseas posting was Freetown Sierra Leone in 1940. It was know at the time as 'White Man's Grave' and the figures for medical admissions were epic until they established sensible precautions.

All you could possibly want to know about the history of Malaria in Italy in the Twentieth Century:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3340992/
 
Is the deathbed confession from the farmer who discovered / reported the body generally considered the final explanation for Bottecchia's death? Or is there reason to believe the farmer didn't kill him?
 
Seems unlikely that the farmer could have thrown a rock big enough to inflict such injury. at least from any distance.
 
Seems unlikely that the farmer could have thrown a rock big enough to inflict such injury. at least from any distance.

I can see a well-thrown rock causing the fatal skull fracture. I can't figure out how one collar bone and unspecified other bones were broken as well.
 
He fell and rolled causing those injuries? ...

I suppose that's possible. We don't really know anything about the scene where he was allegedly "stoned" by the farmer.

I also suppose it's possible the additional injuries (including broken bones) might have resulted from the farmer's transporting (dragging?) him to the place where the body was later found.
 
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