Fausto Coppi

Road cycling, Italy. Coppi's rivalry with the older Gino Bartali split Italian cycling fans in the late 1940s and 1950s. Bartali won the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948, Coppi in 1949 and 1952, and in 1949 Coppi became the first rider to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year. The famous 1952 photograph of the two passing a water bottle, with no agreement on who handed it to whom, sums up how closely their careers were tied.