In a small clubhouse, in a small town, on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, a handful of fading images of Fausto Coppi are pinned to a board. But while the images could easily be overlooked, they have had a lasting impression on the cycling club president Nicholas Grosso, who is a lifelong fan of Coppi. A local rockabilly musician in the town of Sète, Grosso recently brought his love of music and cycling together for his most recent album, appropriately titled “Fausto.”
“I was born here in Sète and started playing guitar before I knew how to speak really,” Grosso said, “but I started cycling early as well and always had a bike. I would pull the fenders off my bike to make it look more like a racer. I just always loved my bike. I would wait every summer to watch the Tour de France and was just glued to my television. And through my grandparents, I learned about Fausto Coppi. They were always talking about his exploits from back in the day and they hooked me. Today, I ride about 100 kilometers a week. And like Fausto, I ride a Bianchi, of course.”
I have plenty of songs already about cyclists. I could already do an EP just about cyclists. I’ve written songs about Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, you name it.
Sète, a port town, sits on the estuary of the Canal du Midi and the Mediterranean. As a historic port for wine exports and the fishing trade, Sète long attracted immigrants from Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean countries. But the city also has an artistic tradition—the French singer Georges Brassens, the filmmaker Agnès Varda and the poet Paul Valéry all called Sète home at certain parts of their lives.
Built on and around the steep peak of Mont Saint-Clair, Sète has long played host to bike races, including the now defunct Grand Prix du Midi Libre and the Tour de France. This past year, Grosso became president of the town’s cycling club, the Guidon Sportif Sètois. “It is a club that’s just full of history,” Grosso said. “Look at that picture on the wall. That is when they brought Fausto here for a race back in 1955. We were the only club in the South of France to have Fausto come, but here in Sète there were a lot of Italian immigrants. The event was called the Grand Prix de la Renaissance. My mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother all were there that day. It was really a big deal. That is perhaps why, even when I was young, I was firstly a Coppi fan.”
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