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The media had grown by 1949. Fans could read about Coppi, and they could see films of him racing, as well as watch by the roadside. He had more coverage than any other cyclist before him. This made Coppi a celebrity, and a controversial celebrity at that.

Coppi earned more money than any other cyclist had before him, and money gave him a lifestyle to be envied, but it was also one that fascinated his fans. He fell in love with the beautiful wife of his doctor. He left his own wife to live with her. They had a son, and Coppi was excommunicated from the Catholic church.

Coppi won the Tour de France again in 1952, before Frenchman Louison Bobet became the first man to win the race three times in a row. Bobet was another rider who made a lot of money from cycling, so much that he often piloted his own aircraft to races. Cycling had come of age, its top riders were wealthy men, and even though it was, and still is, a brutal struggle to succeed, professional cycling now carried with it a gloss of glamour.

In the 1960s the sport was dominated by Jacques Anquetil, a Frenchman, who from humble beginnings as a strawberry grower’s son in Normandy became the first five-time winner of the Tour, the first French winner of the Tour of Italy, and when he won the Tour of Spain, which had started up in 1935, Anquetil was the first cyclist ever to win all three major stage races during his career.