Italian Hero Gino Bartali Died This Day 20 Years Ago—Did His Cycle Rides Save 630 Jews During WWII? Gino Bartali was a three-time winner of the Giro d'Italia cycle race (1936, 1937 and 1946) and a two-time winner of the Tour de France (1938 and 1948) but what people in May 2000 didn’t find out until some years later was that the champion cyclist lived a secret life.