How many rides, how many tugs, how many cyclists and how many kilometers we have seen in the long history of the Giro d’Italia . Now that we are close to a century of life, adding up all the 99 previous editions, we have traveled over 346 thousand km . You do not know how to quantify such a frighteningly huge figure
Well, just think that the moon is, on average, just over 384 thousand km from the earth .
Since its foundation in 1909, the most important men’s road stage race in the boot and one of the most prestigious in the world, it has seen battles, challenges, falls and much more.
The pink jersey is linked to names that evoke sweet emotions in memory alone: ​​fromGirardengo to Binda , passing through Bartali and Coppi , and again Merckx, Pantani, Cunego, Contador, Basso and Nibali . Ten names just to make them fit on the fingers of both hands, but it is certain that many would deserve honors and laurels.
But among the legends and snapshots that exude the past and glory of the Giro d’Italia, there are also anecdotes, mocking curiosities that, with over a century of history, tear a smile . The Bikester website has collected some of them in a nice infographic : we bet you just don’t know them In 1909 , during the second stage, Guglielmo Lodesani, Vincenzo Granata and Andrea Provinciali
finding themselves late, they thought of catching up by getting on a train . They went up to the Ancona station and got off at Grottammare, because there was a check. But, unfortunate for them, on the same wagon there were also some judges who were moving from Bologna to Chieti. Through the photographs that had been taken of all the participants before the departure, the three tadpoles were recognized and disqualified .
Subsequently another cyclist, Giuseppe Brambilla , already out of the Giro due to a fall, was disqualified for the same reason. Also in the first historic Giro d’Italia, Giovanni Rossignoli , who finished third in the standings, camehit by a horse .
One of the most striking slogans of the first historic Giro d’Italia defined the race as the “richest in the world” . The total prize money actually amounted to 25,000 lire (about 600,000 euros today) and the winner, Luigi Ganna , earned 5,325 lire (about 133,000 euros today).
Giuseppe Perna , 49th and last accumulation of 300 lire (about 7,000 euros today).
Ganna himself, as soon as he crossed the finish line as winner of the first edition, when asked by a journalist about how he felt about the victory achieved, replied, in Lombard dialect :
Me brusa tanto el cu!
In 1914 , another “clever” expedient , the first and true episode of towing from a car : during the Bari-L’Aquila stage , and more precisely on the Salita delle Bvolte, the cyclists Carlo Durando, Alfonso Calzolari (who later win that edition) and Clemente Canepari clung to the car of the Italia Sportiva correspondent and were penalized for 3 hours 8 minutes and 1 second.
In the same year, moreover, the lowest number of runners who managed to cross the finish line was registered: out of 81 registered and participants, only eight completed all the stages in the program .
Not only tricks, but alsotrials of great heart and superhuman effort . Among these, Fiorenzo Magni , who during the 1956 Giro d’Italia , despite breaking his collarbone following a fall, finished the race, finishing in second place, clutching an inner tube tied to the handlebars between his teeth, so to be able to both decrease the effort required on the injured left shoulder, and relieve the pain by sinking the teeth into the gum.
This is the story of Magni himself:
In the 1956 Giro I crashed on the Volterra descent and broke my collarbone. “You can’t leave,” the doctor tells me. I let him talk and do my own thing: I put the foam on the handlebars and run the time trial. Then I pass the Apennines. But trying the San Luca time trial I realize that I can’t even grip the handlebars in pain; then my mechanic, the great Faliero Masi, decides to cut an inner tube, he ties it to the handlebar and I hold it with my teeth, so as not to force my arms. The next day, in the Modena-Rapallo I fall again and I also break my humerus. I pass out of pain. I’m on the litter when I regain consciousness and order the ambulance driver to stop. I throw myself down, chase the group, take it back and arrive on Bondone under a snowstorm. For this gesture Ugo Tognazzi and Raimondo Vianello,
Source: Uscat, Wikipedia
Giovanni Sgobba
