This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 143
Cittiglio is one of those places that might easily go unnoticed on a map. It lies not far from Lake Maggiore, one of the largest pre-Alpine lakes on the border between Italy and Switzerland. Without Alfredo Binda, born here and later to become one of the greatest Italian cyclists of all time, it would probably have remained just another name on the map.
Today, however, thanks in part to the UCI Women’s World-Tour race that bears his name, this small town in northern Italy has become a point of reference for cycling fans.
The champion’s memory is preserved in the Alfredo Binda Museum, housed on the first floor of Cittiglio’s railway station. I climb the stairs. Sunlight pours through the large windows, filling the room. On the white walls, plexiglass panels display photographs tracing his career, first as a rider and later as head coach of the Italian national team, while also offering glimpses of his pastimes.
In front of me is a photograph of Binda wearing a black jersey and holding a cornet in his hands – similar to a trumpet but more compact – as he looks toward the camera. A young man in a white shirt turns in the same direction; his hand can be seen resting on a piano. His hair is slicked back and he sports the moustache of an American film actor. He is Binda’s music teacher.
It was no coincidence that journalists nicknamed him ‘the trumpeter of Cittiglio’.
“When he was young, he played in the town band and continued to do so even after he moved to Nice,” recalls Binda’s daughter Lauretta. “He used to say that in the park near his house there was a bandstand where the city band performed, and he would go and play with them. Once he became a professional rider he stopped, but I heard my father more than once tell the story of a victory in Naples. He said the band was playing in the middle of the track. He crossed the finish line and immediately afterwards went over to the musicians, asked for a cornet and started playing with them.”
As a young man, Binda moved to France to work with an uncle, and it was there that he first began racing bicycles in his spare time. He rode as a professional between 1922 and 1936, enjoying a career filled with success: he won three World Championships and five Giro d’Italia titles. He also claimed four victories at the Giro di Lombardia and two at Milan-Sanremo.
“They worked as plasterers – or plâtrier in French – and crafted the decorative elements on building façades by hand, such as mouldings and stucco, shaping them with plaster moulds. Their work also required a certain skill in drawing.
“When he was about 70, the city of Nice awarded him honorary citizenship and hosted him in a hotel on the Promenade des Anglais,” Lauretta continues. “When he got to the room, he stepped out onto the balcony and said to my mother, ‘Maybe I made these decorations’. Many years earlier he had been there as a labourer, and now he found himself in the same place as an honoured guest. He was a simple and modest man: whenever people organised celebrations or tributes for him, he was genuinely surprised.”
Exhibits and anecdotes
The museum’s white tables hold display cases containing various mementos: lace-up shoes used in track races, toe clips and three pairs of race goggles with elastic straps, now badly worn, evoking the dust, the often unpaved roads and the toughness of racing in those days.
There is also a leather saddle with a small opening in the centre. And there is his cornet. Beside it sits the peaked cap he wore in the town band.
“When he was around 60, he was invited onto a RAI television programme where Nini Rosso, one of the most famous Italian trumpeters, was performing. They asked him if he wanted to play with him and my father replied: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have the lips anymore’, as musicians say, because he hadn’t played for 30 years.
“So they brought a trumpet to the house so he could practise. I remember him trying to produce sounds he could no longer manage. In the end he learned a short piece and actually went on the programme to play it,” Lauretta recalls.
In one corner of the museum there is an old wooden table with a binder containing newspaper articles documenting his exploits, and in another stand two Legnano bicycles. On the nearby walls, framed like paintings, hang a rainbow jersey and an Italian champion’s jersey – a title Binda won four times.
One of the two bicycles is the Legnano on which he won the inaugural professional road World Championship, held on the Nürburgring circuit in Germany. The podium was an all-Italian affair: behind Binda came Costante Girardengo and Domenico Piemontesi. It was 1927, and the bicycle, with its wooden rims, weighed 10.6 kilograms.
The other bicycle, weighing marginally less, is the one on which he won the 1932 World Championship in Rome. On the handlebar tape of both bikes – dirty and worn – the marks of use and the passing of years are clearly visible.
The 1932 World Championship took place in the middle of the Fascist era, and it is said that the regime had hoped for another victory by Learco Guerra, not least because his surname lent itself well to the rhetoric of the time (guerra translates as war). Guerra, nicknamed ‘the Human Locomotive’, had won the rainbow jersey in Copenhagen in 1931 in an edition that remains unique in the history of cycling: the race was contested as an individual time-trial over an exhausting distance of 172 kilometres.
Pay not to play
Over the course of his career, Binda collected 41 Giro d’Italia stage victories, and in the 1933 edition he won the first individual time-trial in the history of the Corsa Rosa, from Bologna to Ferrara, over a distance of 62 kilometres. But one of the most unusual episodes concerns the 1930 edition. Binda had already won the Giro in 1925, 1927, 1928 and 1929, and the organisers decided to pay him not to take part that year, given his overwhelming superiority.
With him at the start, it was said, riders could only hope to finish second. And that risked taking the suspense out of the race. He was offered 22,500 lire, the same amount awarded to the winner of the Giro.
Binda made his only Tour de France the same year, winning two stages before withdrawing. That same year, at the World Championship held near Liège in Belgium, he confirmed his class with an impressive victory: he crashed just outside Theux after hitting a dog, but managed to chase back and win the race.
Another anecdote captures what cycling was like in those days: during the 1926 Giro di Lombardia, Binda said he had fuelled himself during the race with 28 raw eggs.
“He was also known for a phrase in dialect that he often repeated: ‘Ghe vorèn i garùn’, meaning ‘you need good legs’.
He used to say that riding a bicycle requires brains. Back then even more so: there was very little assistance, no race radios, and the team car could not always follow the riders. And then, he would add, you also needed legs – because the bicycle has to be pushed along,” says Lauretta.
Binda’s career ended at Milan-Sanremo in 1936. In the museum, a photograph captures that moment. The great champion lies on the ground after the crash that caused him to fracture his femur. He is curled up on the asphalt, his bicycle lying parallel to his body; there is an almost unnatural order in the image, as if everything had been suspended for a moment.
That episode marked the end of his career as a rider, but not of his relationship with cycling. For 12 years he served as head coach of the Italian national team, achieving a series of prestigious successes.
“In his life he travelled a great deal,” Lauretta says. “When he was a cyclist, during the winter, when there were no road races, he would go to the United States to ride in the Six-Day track races. They would depart by steamship from France and cross the Atlantic: they competed in New York and Chicago, then returned to Europe. He used to say that the last time the crossing lasted eight days, whereas at the beginning it could take as long as 15. They travelled in second class, the one paid for by the American organisers, but in the evening, being famous cyclists, they could go dancing in the first-class ballrooms. For this reason, they always set off with an elegant suit. My father was an exceptional dancer: when he was young he had even taken part in dance competitions.”
At one point in the museum there is also mention of his brother Albino, who for his entire life played the trombone in the town band. “My uncle was also a cyclist, but as a domestique. He always used to say:
‘Whenever I managed to reach the finish with Alfredo, I was always at the back of the group. I would stand up on the pedals to see when he hunched over and launched his sprint.’ In 1930 he won the Tre Valli Varesine, one of the main Italian cycling races of the time, on the very day my father was winning the World Championship. In the roll of honour he was listed as ‘Binda A.’, and he would jokingly get annoyed: ‘Everyone thinks it’s Alfredo… but it was me!’ It was one of those anecdotes that were often told in the family,” says Lauretta.
For his daughter, Alfredo Binda was first and foremost a father like any other: at home they did not constantly talk about cycling. Every now and then the subject would come up again, perhaps because he was invited to some event, a journalist came by, or he happened to meet other former riders.
“He was an open-minded and forward-looking person: he always encouraged my sister and me to study, especially languages, and to become independent. He was born in 1902 and had three brothers and seven sisters. At that time women stayed at home until they found a husband: that was the female role model he had grown up with. With us, instead, he was very modern, and in my opinion that is really remarkable.”
Bridging the generation gap
Every March, the Trofeo Binda-Comune di Cittiglio is held, a race that is part of the UCI Women’s WorldTour. Created in 1974, it is a unique event on the global stage: the only WorldTour race that was established from the very beginning for women’s cycling. It has been able to evolve without losing its identity, deeply rooted in the local area and in its connection with the community.
“The activities we carry out are not limited to the race itself: we organise initiatives until the end of May. We work closely with local schools, developing projects that include cycling and road safety, education on nutrition, and environmental awareness,” says Mario Minervino, president of Cycling Sport Promotion.
Over the years the start location has changed, but the finish has remained the traditional one: the final circuit around Cittiglio.
“Today many municipalities would like to host the start of the race, because it has become prestigious. The idea is to involve as many local communities as possible: the finish remains in Cittiglio, which is the historic venue, while the start changes in order to include other towns. The finale has always remained the traditional one: at most, the number of laps on the circuit around the town has changed, where the winner is almost always decided,” explains Minervino.
The Trofeo Binda-Comune di Cittiglio takes place in March each year (Image: Getty)
On Sunday, March 15, victory went to Karlijn Swinkels: the climbs of Casale and Orino in the final circuit proving decisive. The race is part of the Coppa Italia delle Regioni, the project of the Lega del Ciclismo Professionistico that brings together some of Italy’s main races with the aim of promoting the territory and sports tourism.
In the morning, the Piccolo Trofeo Alfredo Binda-Valli del Verbano also takes place, a round of the UCI Nations Cup Women Junior: “It allows junior riders to compete at an international level and prepare for the step up to the Elite ranks. Many of the girls who won this race as juniors are now racing at the top level of women’s cycling,” says Minervino.
Check the roll call of winners and you’ll spot some familiar names: Lorena Wiebes, Pfeiffer Georgi, and in 2023, Cat Ferguson, just to name a few. This year the race was won by Italian junior champion Matilde Rossignoli. The bridge to the new generations is alive and kicking in Cittiglio.
