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Buying Your First Skateboard
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Road Bike Reviews: The Giro d'Italia is the answer to the Tour de France
The Giro d'Italia has a fine history behind it, like the Tour de
France it was started to publicise a newspaper, just like the
Tour de France the organisers made the leaders jersey the same
colour as the paper, yellow in France from the L'Auto newspaper
and pink in Italy from the La Gazzetta dello Sport. The first
Giro was in 1909 and was 2448 kilometres long (the shortest),
split into 8 stages and was won by the Italian rider Luigi
Ganna, 127 riders started in Milan, but by the finish, also in
Milan, there was only 49 left, this was not the worst edition,
in 1914 only 8 out of the 81 starters managed the full distance.
The winners.
Just like the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, the Giro
d'Italia always has a deserving winner, three riders have won it
five times, Alfredo Binda and Fausto Coppi of Italy and the
great Belgian, Eddy Merckx, Merckx of course also won the Tour
de France five times and the Vuelta once. There have been many
other "stars" who have won the Giro over the years, French
heroes Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault and from Spain
Miguel Indurain have all one 5 Tours de France and the Giro more
than once. The home riders have obviously been the big winners,
Felice Gimondi, Gino Bartoli, Ivan Gotti, Gilberto Simoni and
Paolo Savoldelli have all shown there winning ways, but the
battles between Giuseppe Saronni and Francesco Moser in the 80's
are epic. The strangest rider to have taken part in the Giro
d'Italia would be Alfonsina Morini Strada who is the only woman
to have ridden the race, and finish!
The race itself.
The Giro has started outside of Italy on eight occasions, the
furthest away being either Belgium,
Greece or possibly the Dutch
town of Groningen, which hosted the opening individual time
trial in 2002. When the roa
d bikes race is on Italian soil the main difficulties are
usually the Alps, Dolomites and the Apennines, the Giro is in
May so the big climbs can get dreadful weather, snow, rain and
cold temperatures can shape the race and determine the
winner.
The future of the Giro d'Italia.
The future of the Giro d'Italia looks good, since the UCI
(cycling's governing body) brought in the Pro-Tour all the top
20 teams have to ride the race, before they would only get all
the Italian teams and a few foreign teams with sponsor interests
in Italy, now the race is also shown free on television, where
as before it could only be seen on a private station. The 2005
edition was one of the best for years, top teams, top riders and
a hard course brought the race to life, for years the Giro had
become a procession until the last hour, then the sprinters took
over. The climbers had some good hard stages and the team
leaders would do there work for the overall on the hills or the
time trial, and that was it, now its one of the most exciting
stage races there is from begging to end.
About the author:
Alastair Hamilton is a successful writer who offers a truly
unique depth of experience in competitive cycling, he also
contributes adding technical articles on roa
d bikes to some cycling online magazines. Please, visit bike cycling
reviews to reach further information on bike and cycling
news.
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