Gino Bartali rarely spoke about this for all these years. During World War II, the champion cyclist — winner of the 1938 and 1948 Tour de France — helped rescue Jews in his native Italy by hiding forged documents and papers in the tubes and seat of his bike. Bartali died in 2000. Now, son Andrea Bartali is leading an effort to gain recognition for what his father did.

"It's very moving for me to be here now to talk about my father, a man who covered (nearly 500,000 miles) with his bicycle, many of which during the war, to help people in need and, above all, Jews," Andrea Bartali told The Associated Press. On Thursday, Gino Bartali was honored at the Jerusalem Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. He was inducted into the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations for his work during the German occupation of Italy. He aided the Jewish-Christian rescue network in his hometown of Florence and the surrounding area.

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Source: http://www.kentucky.com/