On the eve of the final stage of the 2007 Giro d’Italia, Danilo Di Luca greeted the press in Verona. All that stood between “The Killer from Spoltore” and Italian cycling history was a routine sprint stage into Milan.
“I am proud to be the first southerner, the first terrone to win the Giro d’Italia,” Di Luca proclaimed, commandeering the derogative that northern Italians deploy against their southern countrymen. “Indeed, I’ll be the first born below Florence.”
Until that day, all 39 Italian Giro winners were northerners, products of the rolling hills of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna or raised in Piedmont, Lombardy, Trentino, and the Veneto with the Alps towering above. Di Luca’s win did not only go against the weight of Italian cycling history — it represented a rare, triumphant ending to a story that has played out repeatedly for his fellow southerners for over a century.
Since 2007, the south has scored two more wins: Vincenzo Nibali, who hails from southern Sicily, grabbed Giro victories in 2013 and 2016, bringing the total number of southern wins to three. Still, the disparity between north and south is supremely lopsided. Of the 99 Giri run to date, northerners have won 66. Lombardy has produced the most wins and winners, taking 28 Giro titles with 17 riders, including Alfredo Binda, Felice Gimondi, and Ivan Basso. Fausto Coppi and Guiseppe Saronni’s native Piedmont comes a distant second, with 19 wins spread over nine riders, while Gino Bartali and Fiorenzo Magni play an outsized role in securing Tuscany’s third place.
The disparity between Italy’s Giro champions is due to the longstanding economic and cultural rivalries between the country’s north and south. Since the unification of Italy in the late 19th century, southerners have escaped the crushing poverty in the Mezzogiorno, Italy’s nine southern regions. For many, that meant a boat ride to the Americas. Others headed to the wealthier north, where Turin’s factories, Milan’s financial institutions, and Genoa’s port formed the basis of a modern, industrialized economy.
By the first decade of the 20th century, that industrial might had made northern Italy the center of the country’s cycling culture. Factory workers needed bicycles to get to work, so bicycle manufacturers sprang up among the automotive and textile factories. Those names — Bianchi, Maino a Dei, Legnano, Atala — would grace the names of the earliest professional cycling teams, because where there were bicycles, there would inevitably be bicycle racers.
Cycling culture took hold in the north in a way that it could not in the south, with its poor road network, agrarian life, and dysfunctional government. A century later, nearly every major institution of Italian cycling is in the north, from the storied Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan to the Madonna del Ghisallo chapel, to the alpha and the omega of the traditional racing season, Milano-Sanremo and Il Lombardia. Gazzetta dello Sport, which launched the Giro in 1909 and remains the dominant organizer in Italian cycling through owner RCS Sport, still operates from downtown Milan. The Federazione Ciclistica Italiana is headquartered in Rome, an apparent concession to the city’s status as the nation’s capital, if not its cycling capital.
Southern cyclists have always headed north in search of a career. Multiple-time Giro stage winner Giovanni Corriere, who passed away in January at the age of 96, moved from Sicily to Tuscany in 1940 when he was 20. Nearly 60 years later, Paolo Tiralongo left Avola on the southern tip of Sicily to ride for U23 squad G.S. Giusti Vellutex Vigorplant in Bergamo.
Domenico Pozzovivo left Policoro in Basilicata to ride for that team’s successor, U.S. Palazzago. Di Luca left Abruzzo to take his shot with G.S. Euromop Caneva Record Cucine in the Veneto.
“All those riders, when they talk of being 16 years old and going to live with another family in the north to start riding as elites or in the U23s and the top national teams in those categories, we miss the nuance,” says Matt Rendell, author of “The Death of Marco Pantani.” “They’re talking about a journey that all Italians know about — leaving your family and the reality that you’re familiar with, and your language, your dialect, to go to another part of Italy where historically your people have not been treated very well. There’s this storyline that for any Italian is implicit.”
Success can breed acceptance, though, and this year Italy’s best hopes for a Giro win rest on the shoulders of a familiar terroni, defending champion Vincenzo Nibali. He knows the upheaval of migration firsthand, having left Sicily at age 19 and moved to Tuscany, where he lived with his director while riding for the U23 G.S. Mastromarco team.
With four grand tour wins, Nibali could tip the balance of power within Italian cycling. For the race’s 100th edition, organizer RCS is serving up a Giro that lingers in the southern sun more than any in recent memory.
The Giro has traditionally held few stages in the south, due to the region’s lacking cycling culture and reputation for reneging on financial commitments. After starting in the Netherlands, the 2016 Giro held just four stages in the south, making a beeline up the country’s spine, the shortest route to the north. In 2015, there were just three stages held south of Tuscany, for a grand total of 665 kilometers.
Not so this year. The race opens with three stages in Sardinia before jumping to Nibali’s Sicily for two more, with the second finishing on Nibali’s doorstep in Messina. All told, 10 stages and 1,690 kilometers of the 2017 Giro — nearly half the race — will fall below the Florentine line that Di Luca used to delineate north from south. The race will visit seven of the nine southern regions. With summit finishes at Mount Etna and Blockhaus and a time trial in Perugia, the south — usually limited to a few rolling and sprint stages — will have an uncommon impact on the general classification battle.
Giro organizers say this year’s route honors the race’s champions. That assertion is borne out by the stage starts in Bartali’s hometown of Ponte a Ema and in Castellania, home of his archrival Fausto Coppi, as well as a trip through Marco Pantani’s old stomping grounds and the finish in Nibali’s Messina. In finally giving the south its due, the 100th Giro also honors those southerners who have made cycling’s great migration, leaving home and family to seek fame and fortune in the north.
The post Southern Italy finally gets its due in balanced Giro route appeared first on VeloNews.com.