8-30 MAY
GIRO D’ITALIA
ESTABLISHED 1909 EDITIONS 104
Of the three grand tours, the Giro d’Italia has been the most ambitious in terms of looking beyond its home country’s borders. The controversial 2018 grande partenza in Israel was scheduled to be followed up by an equally controversial grande partenza last year in Hungary. However, the covid-19 crisis has narrowed all of our horizons a little, and the postponed corsa rosa was forced to reconfigure in 2020 at least. And 2021 will be no different, as the race will kick off in Sicily for several stages on the island and then in the south, before heading north for its usual denouement in the high mountains.
Paradoxically, given the Giro’s proclivity for foreign adventures, of the three grand tours it is the one that is most tied up in the geographic integrity of its home country. The Tour de France celebrates Frenchness and French culture, but the Giro is an expression of Italian unity, and historically the race has derived meaning from that fact. The first Giro d’Italia after World War Two, in 1946, was an overt expression of national togetherness and reconstruction. The Italian newspaper L’Unità marketed the race as the “Giro della Rinascita” -the Giro of renewal, as it was raced against the backdrop of a shattered country rebuilding itself. There was a similar ambition last year. Initially the race was postponed from its usual early season slot as Italy suffered one of the worst and earliest covid-19 outbreaks in Europe. The fact that the race took place at all was miracle enough, and when it finally took place in October it was a galvanising expression of a country struggling to achieve some semblance of normality again.