Paris (AFP)

Former Italian world champion Felice Gimondi, winner of the 1965 Tour de France, died Friday at the age of 76 from a heart attack, Italian media reported.

Gimondi died of a heart attack while bathing in Giardini Naxos, near Taormina (Sicily).

The Bergamasque, one of the seven riders in the history of cycling to win the three great rounds (Giro, Tour de France, Vuelta), has played for nearly five decades Italian cycling, class champion became a responsible listened and influential.

Winner of the Tour de France in his first year in the professional peloton in 1965, one year after revealing himself by winning the Tour de l'Avenir, he had his first participation in the Grand Loop at the flat rate of a holder.

After having sentenced Raymond Poulidor to a new second place, he managed to build himself an exceptional track record despite the competition of the champion of reference, the Belgian Eddy Merckx, his eternal opponent.

The Tour of Italy (three times) and the Tour of Spain were added to the Tour de France on the lines of a list of "monuments", Milan-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix and the Lombardy Tour between other great classics.

The top ? Gimondi may have reached it at the 1973 World Championship on the Catalan circuit of Montjuich.

That day (2 September), the elegant captain of the Squadra settled in the sprint a sumptuous trio, in the order of the Belgian Freddy Maertens, the Spaniard Luis Ocana and the inevitable Merckx, the very one who had advanced two years earlier for the rainbow jersey on the circuit of Mendrisio (Switzerland).

Complete rider, opinionated and intelligent, the Bergamasque excelled in the strategic dimension of cycling and his alliance games. At the twilight of his career, he managed to win the Giro a third time in 1976, nine years after his first success. Meanwhile, Merckx, on which he stumbled so often, had won five times.

The bike hung up at the end of the 1978 season, Gimondi who had settled in a nineteenth century castle near the city of Lombardy opened an insurance company but continued to work in cycling.

A highly respected ambassador of Bianchi, this man with a real charisma even advised Marco Pantani, the first Italian to win the Tour after him in 1998.

© 2019 AFP