Franco Bitossi
Personal information | ||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Franco Bitossi | |||||||||||||||
Nickname | Cuore matto (Crazy heart) | |||||||||||||||
Born | Camaioni di Carmignano, Italy |
1 September 1940 |||||||||||||||
Team information | ||||||||||||||||
Current team | Retired | |||||||||||||||
Discipline | Road | |||||||||||||||
Role | Rider | |||||||||||||||
Major wins | ||||||||||||||||
Tour de France points classification (1968) Tirreno–Adriatico (1967) Giro di Lombardia (1967, 1970) |
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Medal record
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Franco Bitossi (born 1 September 1940) is an Italian former professional cyclist. He was born in Camaioni di Carmignano.
Bitossi cycled for three years as an amateur and became a professional in October 1961, after he had reached the required age of 21.[1] As a professional cyclist, from 1961 until 1978, he won a total of 171 races.
In 1965 he won the Tour de Suisse and the Züri-Metzgete, which he won again in 1968. In 1967 he won the Tirreno–Adriatico, Giro di Lombardia and Coppa Agostoni, while the following year he became the first Italian to win the points classification in the Tour de France.[2]
In 1970, he won the Italian championship.[3]
In 1972 he became famous for his near victory at the World Championship in Gap, France, where he was beaten by only a few meters by his teammate Marino Basso.[1]
Four years later, in 1978, he won the Italian Championship again.[3]
Bitossi was nicknamed Cuore matto ("Crazy heart") due to a cardiac arrhythmia which often compelled him to stop midway in a stage.[4]
Palmarès
The following is an excerpt from Bitossi's palmarès - list of races a rider has won:
<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>
- 1965
- Tour de Suisse
- Züri-Metzgete
- Giro d'Italia:
- Mountains classification
- 1966
- Giro d'Italia:
- Mountains classification
- Tour de France:
- 1st stages 5 and 17
- 1967
- Tirreno–Adriatico
- Giro di Lombardia
- Coppa Agostoni
- 1968
- Züri-Metzgete
- Tour de France:
- Points classification
- Combination classification
- 1st stages 7 and 16
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Franco Bitossi, the Grand Champion with the "Crazy Heart"
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Statistics Franco Bitossi in Cycling Archives Retrieved 2010-05-07
- ↑ Franco Bitossi at Cycling ArchivesLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Use dmy dates from January 2014
- Pages using div col with unknown parameters
- 1940 births
- Living people
- People from the Province of Prato
- Italian male cyclists
- Italian Tour de France stage winners
- Italian Giro d'Italia stage winners
- Tour de Suisse stage winners
- Sportspeople from Tuscany
- Tour de France cyclists
- Giro d'Italia cyclists