Raffaele Di Paco

Raffaele Di Paco

Raffale Di Paco in the 1932 Tour de France
To person
Nickname	La saetta di Fauglia
Date of birth	July 6, 1908
date of death	May 21, 1996
nation	Italy
discipline	Road cycling , track cycling
Driver type	sprinter
To the team
Current team	End of career
function	driver
Last updated: October 31, 2014

Raffaele Di Paco (born June 7, 1908 in Fauglia ; † May 21, 1996 there ) was an Italian racing cyclist . He was considered the best Italian sprinter of his time.

Raffaele Di Paco was a professional from 1928 to 1944. In the 1929 Tour of Lombardy , he finished third. He competed five times in the Tour de France and was stage winner eleven times. In 1931 he won four stages, wore the yellow jersey for four days - one day at the same time as Charles Pélissier - and finished 17th overall. In the following year he won again in four stages and finished in 33rd place in the final accounts. In 1933 and 1934 he gave up prematurely and in 1935 also after he had won two stages before. At its annual start at the Giro d'Italia between 1930 and 1938 , it won a total of 15 stages, four of which in 1935 and four stages and one half stage in 1936 .

In 1940 Di Paco was in Buenos Aires for a six-day race , which he won together with Gottfried Hürtgen from Cologne . After the outbreak of the Second World War , he and some other European racing drivers could not return to Europe. Di Paco stayed in Argentina and drove track and road races there . In 1944 he won the six-day race there with Frans Slaats a second time, in 1943 and 1945 and in 1939 he was second.

After the end of the war, Raffaele Di Paco went to Paris , married a French woman of Italian origin and founded a furniture factory with his mother-in-law. He later moved back to his hometown of Fauglia in Tuscany . He continued cycling until old age; When he was 65 years old, he took part in a race for former cycling stars in Lyon , fell and broke his hip.

Paco was a real star who was said to have “flair and fantasy”. He was not averse to the good life, elegant clothes, beautiful women, smoking and alcohol. He is quoted as saying: "Chi vuole arrivare secondo, si metta alla mia ruota." (Eng. = "If you want to arrive second, you have to get on my bike.")

The Trofeo Sportivi Faugliesi - Memorial Raffaele Di Paco has been held in Fauglia since 2011 . In Acciaiolo , a district of Fauglia, a piazza is named after him.

Web links

Commons : Raffaele Di Paco  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Raffaele Di Paco in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Raffaele Di Paco in the Tour de France database(French / English )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Giampiero Petrucci, Carlo Fontanelli: Corse promiscue sotto le bomb . La Biblioteca del Ciclismo. Geo Edizione, Empoli 2000, p. 50 (Italian).
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Raffaele Di Paco: la saetta di Fauglia. Museo Ciclismo, accessed October 31, 2014 (Italian). 
3. ↑ Eafaele (sic) Di Paco. wielersport.slogblog.nl, accessed on October 31, 2014 (Dutch). 
4. ^ Giro, -1 al battesimo Gli sprinter più veloci. Giro d'Italia, October 22, 2010, accessed October 31, 2014 (Italian). 
5. ↑ Trofeo Sportivi Faugliesi - Memorial Raffaele Di Paco. (No longer available online.) Federciclismo.it, archived from the original on October 31, 2014 ; Retrieved October 31, 2014 (Italian). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ^ Voglia d'estate, Voglia de festivities. il Coccolone, May 2, 2008, accessed November 1, 2014 (Italian).