Forza Italia, Under Very Specific Circumstances
The undercard races for the last monument of the season
1I’m not a big fan of Italy under normal circumstances. Their history and architecture are overrated. Their food is overrated, and they’re prescriptive and pretentious about it2 despite most of the inviolable Italian classic dishes actually coming from the U.S. The Marxist academic responsible for dropping this unfortunate truth bomb, Alberto Grandi, is a pariah in his homeland. He’s one of my personal heroes.
Ferrari has been coasting for 50 years, and has been the Sick Man of Formula 1 since the day Frank Williams put together his first race car. The one exception to that historical trend was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the team was run by Jean Todt (French), with cars built by Ross Brawn (English) and Rory Byrne (South African), and driven by Michael Schumacher (German). In a previous life, I briefly pursued3 a Ph.D in political science, with a concentration on European Union enlargement and foreign policy.4 One constant thread in my studies was that the other Old Money EU countries—Germany, France, Belgium, the U.K. to some extent—would frequently watch Italy attempt to govern itself and go “What the hell are you guys thinking?”
I have great admiration for Giuseppe Garibaldi as a historical figure, but I wonder if we wouldn’t all have been better off if he’d remained a humble math teacher.
Seven people from Italy subscribe to this newsletter. Or at least they did as of Thursday night. I will miss you.
But even I, with my bordering-on-Problematic disdain for most things Italian, will give them this: They know how to build a race course.
Monza is one of the great racing circuits on the planet, evidence that Italy can do NASCAR better than NASCAR itself.5 And on two wheels? Love the Giro. The last 15 minutes of Milan-San Remo is the best 15 minutes of the cycling calendar. Tirreno-Adriatico is my favorite one-week stage race, and it has the best trophy this side of the Stanley Cup. Strade Bianche is my favorite race of the year, bar none.
I don’t know if it’s appropriate or fitting or whatever that we return to Italy for the end of the proper road racing season.6 But I’m glad that we do.
A week from Saturday is the big tamale. No, that’s not right, I’ve got to pick an Italian food metaphor. The big cannoli. Yes, the big cannoli: Il Lombardia.
The Tour of Lombardy, or the Giro di Lombardia, is the climbiest of the five monuments, with 4,800 meters of climbing across 252 horizontal kilometers. The biggest climbs top out at around 1,000 meters of elevation, and last as long as 13 kilometers. So not exactly a double traverse of Mont Ventoux, but this is a proper mountain race, which is highly unusual for a one-day race.
So it’s a classics race for non-classics riders. Philippe Gilbert won this race back-to-back years in 2009 and 2010, and he’s the last winner you wouldn’t call either a climber or a GC guy.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ve got another week to ramp up to Il Lombardia—both the viewers and the riders themselves—so it’s a good thing we’ve got some warmup. Three hilly classics races that, despite not being rated at World Tour level, attract all the big names who want to take a shot at the glamor race on October 12.
First is the Giro dell’Emilia tomorrow. The men’s course is 215 kilometers, with proper mountains in the first half, finishing with five trips around a circuit. And it’s not just a lazy downtown loop—it’s straight up the Via San Luca in Bologna, then straight down, then straight back up again. This climb is 2.1 kilometers with an average gradient of 9.4 percent, and it’s even harder than the numbers make it look, since the first two-thirds of the climb are in excess of 10 percent, up to 12.2 percent.
Primož Roglič has won the men’s race three out of the past five years, which makes sense given that this race is like doing the sharp end of La Flèche Wallonne five times in a row. He’ll be back, along with Remco Evenepoel, Julian Alaphilippe, Ben Healy, Tom Pidcock, Matteo Jorgenson, the Yates brothers, Giulio Ciccone and…oh, Tadej Pogačar. Well I guess that’s academic.
There is a women’s Giro dell’Emilia, but it’s some real Wage Gap shit. It’s half the length of the men’s race, with only two trips up the Via San Luca…and basically no other climbing. It’ll still be a big opportunity for the puncheurs, but the startlist hasn’t been finalized so I don’t know who’s going yet.
The next Italian classic is Tre Valli Varesine, which is 200 kilometers, almost all of it on a circuit north of Milan, up near the Swiss border. In Varese, as it happens. You think that’s how the race got its name? “Tre Valli” means “Three Valleys” in Italian, according to Google Translate…and you know what? I think I could’ve figured that out on my own.
Anyway, if you heard “Swiss border” and thought of hills, you were correct to do so. Can’t have valleys without hills. There are only three real climbs in the race, the tallest of them peaking at 480 meters’ elevation. But the riders will cross that crest nine times over the course of the race. This climbing isn’t as long as in Il Lombardia or as steep as Giro dell’Emilia, but there’s a lot of it.
Because this race dangles off the end of the road racing calendar, and it’s still five days away as I write, the startlist is still in flux. But as of now, the UAE Team Emirates’ varsity players, including Pogačar, are scheduled to attend. There’s also a women’s edition, and this time, the organizers actually let the ladies ride the hills. The race isn’t as long, but again, it’s up and down Montello without respite. Last year, Lianne Lippert beat Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig to the victory.
And finally, Gran Piemonte. I’m gonna try it without Google Translate this time: Grandmother Piedmont. Oh, “Great.” OK.
Gran Piemonte is the least demanding of the trilogy, and it’s on Thursday, just two days before Il Lombardia itself, so most—but not all—of the big contenders sit it out. This year’s parcours does have one big climb: Passo della Colma, which is 8.7 kilometers at an average gradient of 5.4 percent. But it’s all by itself, and right in the middle of the course, so riders who get dropped can re-form and catch up later.
Generally, Gran Piemonte is still a race for the climbers and GC guys. Rigoberto Urán has won here, as have Egan Bernal and George Bennett. But so have Sonny Colbrelli and Iván García Cortina. So depending on the pace and the tactics, it’s open to any non-uranium-legged sprinter as well. Il Lombardia not so much.
Put these three races together and you’ve got all the elements that make the final monument of the season worth its label. Just not all at the same time. Still, I like when the big one-day races have an undercard, like in Ardennes Week. This might not be quite as prestigious, but the Italians set it up, so you know the racing will be good.
Photo’s out of date—Alberto Bettiol is no longer on EF—but it’s a good shot of the Italian national champion’s jersey
If the entire Neapolitan pizza prescriptivist industrial complex got Thanos snapped off the planet tomorrow I would throw a party
And failed utterly in said pursuit, I’m not ashamed to admit
This was around the time of the Treaty of Lisbon, and pre-Brexit. It seemed like more of a growth market than journalism
Imola’s a liiiiiiittle overrated, but still good
Does there need to be higher meaning?
I'm glad you are writing about cycling instead of "European Union enlargement and foreign policy." Thanks for mentioning Sonny Colbrelli, another of my favorite cycling names.