Giro d'Italia is an exciting event for professional cyclists and fans around the world. It is one of the three biggest cycling races.
Together with the Tour de France and the Vuelta España, the Giro d'Italia is part of the big three cycling races. Want to know more about this international competition? Then read today's post!
Like the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia started thanks to the efforts of a sports publication. La Gazzetta Dello Sport organized the cycling race in response to Corriere Della Sera's - other sports newspaper - Giro d'Italia Automobilistico.
The first Giro d'Italia race took place in May 1909 with 127 participants, eight stages and almost 2500 kilometers. The race was won by Italian cyclist Luigi Anna.
Subsequent races have seen many changes in the number of stages, the points system, and start and finish locations. The First and Second World Wars meant that the race took a break from 1915-1918 and from 1941-1945. Since 1946, the race has returned every year; in 2019, cyclists took part in race 102.
In 1931, officials added symbols to the Grand Tours to better characterize them: a special jersey to identify the leader in the overall class. The color pink was chosen as an allusion to the pages on which La Gazzetta printed its stories. The first cyclist to win the pink jersey was Learco Guerra, who won the Milan-Mantova stage that year.
In the first decades, it was mostly Italians, but the first enthusiastic foreign cyclists began to appear in the competition. For example, there was Charly Gaul from Luxembourg and Jacques Anquetil from France (who won the Tour de France five times).
Later, in the 90s, cyclists such as Gianni Giugno, Claudio Chiappucci and Franco Cioccolli maintained local dominance. Therefore, it is not surprising that this event appears in bookmakers and experts give advice on cycling betting: www.feltet.dk/spil/nyheder/interessante_fakta_og_tips_om_vaeddemaal_paa_cykling/.
The current jerseys are pink for the general classification riders and blue (since 2012, and before that green) for the mountain riders. There is also a purple jersey for the points rider and a white jersey for the youth class rider.
Giro d'Italia also has a secondary classification. However, this class does not use special colors due to the rules of the International Cycling Union (UCI).
The second classification includes team time trial, sprint, fair play and moral classification.
102 race took place from May 11 to June 2, 2019. It began in Bologna with an individual time trial and ended with the same race in Verona.
The Giro d'Italia in 2019 had a total number of stages 21 and a length of almost 3500 kilometers. Ecuadorian Richard Caraoaz won the general class, and Italian Vincenzo Nibali took second place.
The scoring class was won by German Pascal Ackermann, and Italian Giulio Ciccone won in the mountain class. Finally, the youth class went to Colombian Miguel Angel.
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In conclusion, we want to note that the race also had a stage in San Marino, which was a tribute to several prominent figures. One of them was Leonardo da Vinci on the 500th anniversary of his death. Another was Fausto Coppu, who became a legend during the 1949 Giro race.