Il Tour of Italy 2021 will start on Saturday 8 May and will end on Sunday 30. It will be the 104th edition.
It will be the second edition that will run in an emergency, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and therefore the repetition of the prevention mechanism is expected, in compliance with the protocols and security measures already tested last year when the stage race it took place in October.
The stages will be 21, spread over 3450 km with two time trials, 9 km in Turin and 29,4 km on the last day, with the arrival in Milan. The Giro d'Italia will last 3 weeks.
There will be the Dolomite stage with the Fedaia Pass (Pantani Mountain), and the one from Canazei to Sega di Ala (unpublished uphill arrival for the Giro); to climb, before the final ascent, the Passo San Valentino.
Giro d'Italia 2021, the calendar of the stages (virgilio.it)
The anniversaries to be honored
As always, great space will also be given to anniversaries for our country and that the Giro wants to honor in its style. For the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, one of the stops will be in Ravenna, the city where his remains are preserved, while for the 160th anniversary of the unification of Italy and exactly 10 years later, the starting stop is located in Turin. , the first capital of Italy.
The legendary Maglia Rosa will also be honored, which this year will turn 90 and was worn for the first time in 1931 in the Giro won by Francesco Camusso.
The Giro d'Italia, our passion, our history, our hope
In fact, in over a hundred years of life, it was established in 1909, the Giro d'Italia has crossed our roads, our mountains, our history. And our lives. The duels between the great Italian riders, along the roads of our peninsula, ended up splitting Italy in two: Coppi o bartalic, gimondi o Motta, Moser o saroni, ashlar o Chiappucci.
The Giro d'Italia only stopped in the years of the two world wars, it accompanied us in happy and dramatic moments. Those faces, now happy for a victory, now suffering from the effort, were the mirror of our daily life.
No sport can give such strong emotions as cycling, because no sport requires so much physical and mental effort. In the face of fatigue, only a strong and sincere clap of hands is needed. As sincere as cycling.
Hoping, then, that the Giro d'Italia 2021 marks the beginning of the end of the pandemic emergency and that, at the brow of the Alpine mountains, a very long descent will begin for everyone, not just cyclists, that will keep us away from the virus forever. .
Memory of Gianni Mura
We cannot talk about cycling, about Giri d 'Italia, about Tour de France without talking about Gianni Mura. March 21, 2021 will be one year after his painful death, which occurred when the darkness of the Covid-19 pandemic had already fallen over Italy and beyond.
Gianni Mura has been the written and spoken voice of cycling for decades. He told us about the stages, the winners and the losers, but, above all, with his words, he gave a body and a soul to this wonderful sport.
He told us like no one the beauty of a bicycle and the effort of pedaling, the joy of a victory after climbing prohibitive peaks and the pain of a defeat that reached the last meter, the smiles of the winners and the tears of the defeated, the pre and the post of each race, black and white, with all its infinite intermediate shades, of cycling. The writer has read and listened to it for years, but it has certainly not stolen his wonderful art.
Gianni Mura, the Raphael of the word
In Gianni Mura the word becomes like a brush in Raphael's hand. Slowly, word after word, paragraph after paragraph, that white sheet was filled with literary colors, slowly a painting was being created depicting a runner, a stage, a city, a typical dish of the locality that had hosted the race.
Each word had its weight, its value, its essence. Only apparently you were reading an article on a sports topic, in reality what you had under your eyes was a distillate of literature and culture of the past.
Remembering Gianni Mura is simply a duty, as the Masters remember.
