The Strange Circumstances of Ottavio Bottecchia's Death...
Murder or unfortunate accident?
On June 3rd, 1927 an unconscious cyclist was found on the side of the road between Trasaghis and Peonis, in the Udine Province of Eastern Italy, today less than 50 kilometers from the Slovenian border. Upon transfer to a local hospital he was found to have a cracked skull, a broken collarbone, and several other fractures. Accounts vary slightly as to whether his bike was found leaning against a wall or neatly lying on the grass nearby, but it was undamaged in all accounts. On the road there were no skid marks or any suggestion that he’d been hit by a vehicle. Twelve days later without regaining consciousness the cyclist, Italian Champion Ottavio Bottecchia, the first Italian to win the Tour de France in 1924 and again in 1925, died. He was 32 years old. In the first of many twists to the story Ottavio’s brother, Giovanni, had been killed less than two weeks before when a car struck him while he was riding his bike on the same stretch of road. It was due to his brother’s death that Ottavio had left France where he had been training prior to the upcoming 1927 Tour de France.
Like many other cyclists of the era, Ottavio came from a working class background, grew up in poverty, and saw professional cycling as a way out of that poverty. It was said that he had started working so young that he’d had so little schooling that he did not learn to read or write until he was a professional. At the outset of World War I growing tired of manual labor as a mason, Ottavio volunteered for the Italian Army, something that as a socialist must have given him misgivings. Nevertheless, he was assigned to a cycle brigade within the Bersaglieri, or sharpshooters. Bottecchia served mainly as a messenger for four years, ferrying intelligence from the Austrian front back to command; he was awarded a bronze star for valor for his service . It was a commander who spotted Bottecchia’s endurance in unforgiving terrain who first suggested he consider becoming a professional.
One of Bottecchia’s earliest professional races was the 1923 Tour of Italy (Giro d’Italia) where he placed fifth riding without team support, and caught the eye of French Champion Henri Pelissier, who immediately invited the Italian to join his new team, Automoto-Hutchinson. Ottavio went on to win a stage of the Tour de France and finish second behind Pelissier, who announced at the finish that Bottecchia would succeed him and win the next year’s race - which he did. In 1924 Bottecchia won the first stage of the Tour and kept the lead to the end. In 1925 he won again, but in 1926 he failed to deal with harsh weather conditions and dropped out of the race. 1927 was to be his year to avenge that loss and win the Tour for the third time.
The circumstances surrounding his death remain uncertain almost 100 years later. On the day of his mishap he was found with multiple injuries by a farmer who lived near the scene of the accident. He was taken to a nearby inn and put on a table and given his last rites. Hanging on in a coma he was transported to a hospital in Gemona where he died on June 15, 1927. Both Ottavio and his younger brother were known to have socialist sympathies, which was not looked upon kindly by the then current Fascist regime. Giovanni was thought to have had some sort of run-in with a local political figure which may have led to an act of retribution. There are some who say that Ottavio may have insulted a local power figure who had offered a settlement for his brother’s death which in turn made him a marked man. The climate in Italy at the time was not conducive to large scale investigations that might impugn the government and in any event the family was due a monetary settlement and accepted the official verdict of a hit and run. In any case years later, the farmer who had found Ottavio admitted on his deathbed that he had caught a man eating grapes off of his vines. He threw the stone which killed the cyclist and the farmer panicked and carried the body back to the road. However, the likelihood that the farmer could heave such a large object to cause so much bodily injury seems small. And, there is the nagging problem that the grapes in early June would not have been close to being ripe and edible. Finally, in New York City, an Italian man dying from stab wounds on a New York waterfront while receiving his last rites claimed he had been employed as a hit man and had been hired to kill Bottechia. He named a supposed godfather, although nobody of the name was ever found. So, the mystery remains.
Pictured: Bottechia in the 1924 Tour de France