The Giro di Pizza Belt

Tom Pidcock's first win for Q36.5, plus I design a stage race for my home country

Photo Credit: Pauline Ballet, ASO

The nascent road racing season continues with a variety of second- and third-tier races, most notably the Alula Tour. I’m not wild about cycling joining the cavalcade of sports that’s letting itself get used by the Saudi government for sportswashing purposes,¹ but morally appalling undertones notwithstanding,² it’s always interesting to be reminded of how entirely Eurocentric this sport is.

The lion’s share of high-level road racing takes place in Europe, specifically in six countries: France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. And not to lump all of Western Europe together, but it has a certain look. In terms of climate, architecture, topography, you’re used to televised road racing looking a certain way.

Anything that deviates from that—big multi-lane highways, deserts, different trees—has always looked kind of fascinatingly uncanny. It was true for the Olympics in Brazil and Japan, for world championships in Norway and Australia, and it’s true when stage racing goes to the Middle East. And if it weren’t for the human rights abuses, I see no reason why we shouldn’t race there. They’ve got roads and hills and cities—quite challenging hills and quite striking cities, as it happens. As you’re reading this, the fourth stage of the Alula Tour will be wrapping up Harrat Viewpoint,³ which features a 2.9 kilometer climb at 12.0 percent.

That should be quite a test for Tom Pidcock, the current race leader, who wasted no time taking his first win for his new team. And I feel obliged to mention that while Q36.5 remains a stupid team name, their jerseys look very sharp. Love the dark green with the white sleeves. If you want to know how this race unfolded, you should do what I did and check out the Lanterne Rouge breakdown.

Good for Pidders getting off on the right foot, but it would’ve been alarming if he weren’t competitive here. There are only six World Tour teams in the field, and the overwhelming majority of them brought sprint teams. Jayco Alula has Dyan Groenewegen and Luka Mezegec; Soudal Quick-Step brought Tim Merlier; Picnic PostNL brought Fabio Jakobsen and John Degenkolb;⁴ Tudor has Arvid de Kleijn; Uno-X brought Alexander Kristoff…XDS Astana and Bahrain-Victorious seem to have filled out their rosters starting with their youngest riders.

The only real threat to Pidcock ought to have been UAE’s Rafał Majka, but he crashed and lost six minutes on Stage 1. Majka came home within 30 seconds of Pidcock on Stage 2, so it seems like he’s OK, but he’s UAE’s what…10th-best GC guy now? UAE can’t be taking this too seriously if they couldn’t bother to bring Isaac del Toro or Brandon McNulty to pick up a cheap GC win.

Anyway, good for Pidcock, hope the good form keeps up for him.

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This week, a Bluesky user named Steve Likes Cocoa…actually I’m just guessing that’s how his handle is supposed to read. It’s all lowercase, so it could be Steve Likescocoa, which would be South African? If I had to guess?

Anyway, Steve sent me an article from December, by Ewan Wilson of Cyclist, proposing a grand tour of the United States. Now, Wilson is far from the first person to moot a Tour of America as a thought exercise, and there’s a reason for that: It’s fun as hell to think about.

The proposed route starts in New York, goes through New England and out to Chicago before a transfer to San Antonio, then up through the Rockies and back down to the finish in Los Angeles.

I think if you’re going to do the entire country, this is a decent route. It hits some climbs that would become legendary by their inclusion in a grand tour: Mount Washington, Pikes Peak, Mount Baldy. At 39.5 kilometers, Pikes Peak would be three times as long as Alpe d’Huez and half again as long as the Col du Galibier.

Those big climbs out west might not be as steep as some of the grand tour legends, but they’re long as hell. This route skips Arizona’s Mount Lemmon, which GCN did a whole feature on a few years ago, but Pikes Peak is a similar vibe: Long, bare, sunny. Just a completely different challenge to the Alps or the Dolomites.

My favorite suggestion: Mauna Kea, which was cut from the final route because it’s way in the middle of the fucking ocean. Still: 68.3 kilometers at 6.1 percent. We have no concept of what a climb like that would look like in a grand tour. Logistically impossible, but really interesting to dream about.

The course would go through the three biggest cities in the U.S., plus Boston, Las Vegas, landmarks like Lake Placid and Death Valley, and Waco, my favorite weird-as-shit midsized city in the entire country.

I get why tourists see Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and Disneyworld, but America is so much more Waco than any of those places. Following this route would actually give a pretty representative view of the country: Deserts, forests, hills, valleys, both coasts, the Great Lakes, big cities, college towns, the Rust Belt, the whole nine yards.

This route would, however, end up shortchanging Appalachia and the Great Plains, and skipping the Southeast and Pacific Northwest entirely. That’s because, and there’s no way of getting around this,

The U.S. is too big for a grand tour.

Even a compromise route would require thousands of miles in air travel. That’s why I like confining stage racing in the U.S. to what it traditionally has been: One-week races around a single state, like California or Georgia—both of which were on the calendar this century. Texas is about the same size and shape as France. Economically and geographically, the U.S. isn’t analogous to a single European country, it’s analogous to the entirety of Western Europe put together.

Which got me thinking about a climb I was sad to see left off, because it’s one of the best-known in U.S. cycling history, and also because it’s close to where I grew up: Philadelphia’s Manayunk Wall. It’s not a grand tour killer, at 0.7 kilometers, but with an average gradient of 9.9 percent, maxing out north of 16 percent, it’s an Ardennes-type puncheur’s playground.

I’ve moved all over the U.S., but I’ve lived in New Jersey for about two-thirds of my life, and believe it or not this region is fairly fertile cycling ground. The Mid-Atlantic had the Tour DuPont in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Philadelphia International Cycling Classic, and numerous hobby rides. New Jersey is 1) very small and 2) for the most part extremely flat. Philadelphia to Atlantic City is about 60 miles, and I know amateur riders who’d do that in a day during the summer.⁵

This got me thinking about a race stage that starts in New York City and ends with at least one lap of the Manayunk Wall. Then I got thinking about a sprint stage or a prologue in a Jersey Shore town like Asbury Park or Ocean City, and before I’d realized what was happening I’d mapped out an entire one-week Tour of the Mid-Atlantic. Or, as I’m choosing to call it: the Giro di Pizza Belt, after the fact that the Greater New Jersey Area has the greatest density of good pizza anywhere in the would, and “Giro di” instead of “Tour de” because people up here love Italian shit.

I’m not mapping this out on La Flamme Rouge, mostly because I don’t know how, but here’s a rough idea of what I’m after:

Prologue: Baltimore Inner Harbor; Fort McHenry to Fells Point (7.0 km, individual time trial)

Yes, that’s a lot of cobbles for an individual time trial, but it’s really nice, so just roll with it

Stage 1: Aberdeen, Maryland, to Philadelphia; Ripken Stadium to Manayunk Wall via Wilmington, Delaware, Carneys Point, New Jersey, Independence Mall, and Ben Franklin Parkway (~150 km, depending on route through Wilmington and Philadelphia)

The pepperoni-red leader’s jersey (la maglia pepperonia) will likely change hands as the riders spend the afternoon crossing the Susquehanna River, getting in and out of Delaware as quickly as possible, with the peloton traversing the dizzying heights of the Delaware Memorial Bridge—ordinarily impassable to cyclists—before winding back up through rural southern New Jersey, across the Ben Franklin Bridge, and hitting the major sights.

Yes, we’ll do a ride-by of the Liberty Bell and the Art Museum.

This stage ends with at least one ascent of the Wall, where we’ll find out who the most explosive puncheur is, and the marketing team will make everyone they meet on the street say “Mur de Huy” into a microphone.

Stage 2: Philadelphia to Long Pond, Pennsylvania; Mann Center to Pocono Raceway via Valley Forge, Jim Thorpe, and Lake Harmony (193 km)

Our first big mountain test of the race. Where do the grand tours go when they want to test their climbers? Ski resorts! So we’ll do the same, backtracking a bit to get a nice, picturesque start in Fairmount Park, then winding up into the Pocono Plateau, with intermediate climbs gaining a total of 1,300 meters of elevation. The climb up Route 93 near Jim Thorpe⁶ features an average gradient of nine percent over 3.1 kilometers, according to this site I found.

Those who survive can sprint it out on the treacherous NASCAR tri-oval that’ll serve as the finish line.

At this point my wife called upstairs to tell me she was getting ready for bed. The conversation went a little like this:

“What are you doing?”

“I’m mapping out a bike race across the Pizza Belt.”

“…oh…great”

Stage 3: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to High Point State Park, NJ (147 km)

More climbing, first from our transfer point in Wilkes-Barre to nearby Scranton, site of the largest collection of shitfaced undergraduates I’ve ever seen, including multiple SEC football games. From there, we trace I-84 east to the High Point Monument, which at 1,803 feet above sea level is the highest point in New Jersey. My dad took me there when I was in middle school. I remember being wildly underwhelmed.

But if you’re hauling ass on a bicycle, it’s challenging. The course record for the High Point Hill Climb Time Trial is 19 minutes, 32 seconds over 8.9 kilometers at 4.3 percent, up to 22 percent at the steepest point. What makes this really exciting is the sharp descent across the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border to the base of the climb.

Stage 4: Jersey City , New Jersey, to Saugerties, New York; Liberty State Park to Saugerties Lighthouse via West Point and Kingston (205 km)

The thing about starting and stopping a stage is you need hotels for all the riders, support staff, broadcasters, and journalists to stay at overnight. Hence the ski resorts. High Point is way up at the tip of New Jersey, which is the only place in the whole state where nobody lives. By the time I got far enough southeast to reach civilization, I figure we might as well start in Hoboken, with a good view of the Manhattan skyline, and head due north up the Hudson Valley.

It pains me to admit this, as a lifelong objector to the state of New York as a concept, this is some of the most picturesque land in the country. Plus, I count four tricky hills, including one before we even get out of New Jersey.

Stage 5: Rhinebeck, New York to Brooklyn; Rhinebeck Village to Coney Island (209 km)

Aaaaand straight back down the other bank of the Hudson. It occurred to me that as I’ve been flogging these sprinters up the Wall and through the Poconos, they’re not going to be very happy with me. I don’t think any of the climbs are going to put them in danger of getting OTL’d, it’ll just be annoying. So let’s throw them a bone: A straight dash down the hill, through New York City, with a sprint finish right along the beach. How much more glamorous could it be? Just don’t ask me about the traffic control logistics.

Stage 6: Keansburg, New Jersey to Barnegat, New Jersey; Keansburg Amusement Park via Long Branch, Asbury Park, Seaside Heights, Toms River, Surf City and Beach Haven (172 km)

I wanted to start in Brooklyn again, but I imagine shutting down the Verrazano Narrows Bridge for a bike race is probably a nonstarter. So we have yet another transfer across the bay for a sprint stage that promises to be rife with hellacious crosswinds.

At least that’s what I’m telling the Europeans. Because you and I know the truth.

We’re traversing the Jersey Shore!

Or at least most of it. Straight down the coast to Seaside Heights, then a hard right over to Toms River, then south again until you hit the turn for Long Beach Island. From there, we’re gonna do an out-and-back of LBI, which is a barrier island that’s 18 miles long by about four blocks thick. Go down to the southern end, turn around, come back until you hit the lighthouse.

Stage 7: Ocean City, New Jersey to Atlantic City, New Jersey; Ocean City Boardwalk to Absecon Lighthouse via Lucy the Elephant, the Brigantine, and the ground floor of whichever casino wants a crapton of free exposure (~33 km, individual time trial)

Is it a bit much to do two time trials in a one-week race? Maybe. But after I’d done all the work of mapping out this course I realized I’d done it backwards. What I should’ve done is cut across New Jersey after the Manayunk stage, knocked out these flat stages on the Jersey Shore and through New York, then gone into the Poconos.

So if not for this last time trial, the battle for la maglia pepperonia⁷ would’ve been long over. Best to shake things up.

This time trial starts at the north end of the Ocean City Boardwalk, with a time check at the iconic Lucy the Elephant hotel in Margate. From there, up Atlantic Ave toward the casinos. And here’s where, while my wife was listening to me explain the route, with extreme, extreme patience, she had an idea: Take the time trial through the floor of one of the casinos.

There are a couple logistical considerations. You’d probably have to lay down a temporary floor so the riders wouldn’t wipe out on the transition from asphalt to carpet. Atlantic City casinos are one of the last places in the country where you can still smoke indoors, so we’ll have to open a window or something.

But tell me you wouldn’t get a kick out of Brandon McNulty screaming through the lobby of the Borgata, looking like the very avatar of liberty in his stars and stripes jersey. Then he hits the second checkpoint and a giant electronic scoreboard shows that he’s in the lead! The crowd goes wild like someone just won a slot machine jackpot!

A moment like that would make me proud to be an American.

From there, a little jaunt over the bridge to Brigantine, then a loop and back to the finish around the Absecon Lighthouse. Lots of lighthouses in this race. The European TV audience is going to watch this race and think America is a nation of lighthouses.

So there it is: the Giro di Pizza Belt, the next great American stage race.

Aaaand I spent four hours and more than 2,000 words planning it, so that means I’m not going to get to the other stuff I wanted to talk about this week: Streaming price hikes and the world cyclocross championship. Oh yeah, the world cyclocross championship is this weekend. Wout van Aert is making a surprise appearance! How thrilling!

Man, I got really excited about my Baltimore-to-Jersey Shore bike race, and now I’m sad it’s not real. Curse my overactive imagination.

1. Though the Saudis are late to the party, seeing as how you can’t throw a bidon in the pro peloton without hitting a team sponsored by a country with a government that falls somewhere on the spectrum between “repressive” and “actively committing crimes against humanity.”

2. As an American sports journalist, I feel like I’m going to get a lot of use out of that phrase over the next four years at least

3. I mean, this does look pretty sick. I’m a sucker for a scenic overlook.

4. And presumably a gingham blanket and a basket with sandwiches and lemonade

5. And not, like, serious racers. When I was in high school my friend’s dad would get up at dawn, ride to the shore, and my friend and I would drive down and meet him there around midday with lunch.

6. A gorgeous little town my wife and I vacationed at last summer. Tiny, winding roads and ski chalets that would look right at home in the Tour or the Giro.

7. “The Maggie Pep,” to those of us in the know