THE GIRO D’ITALIA

The Giro d’Italia is three weeks of bicycle racing through Italy in May: twenty-one stages and some three and a half thousand kilometres, from a start that moves every year to a finish that has lately been Rome. It is the first of the year’s three grand tours. In 2026 it began on the Black Sea, at Nessebar in Bulgaria.

It costs nothing to watch. The race comes to the road, and the road is free.

The Pink Paper

The race was invented to sell a newspaper. La Gazzetta dello Sport of Milan announced it on its front page on 7 August 1908, and on 13 May 1909, at seven minutes to three in the morning, 127 riders set off from Piazzale Loreto. Forty-nine finished, and Luigi Ganna won.

The Gazzetta is printed on pink paper, and since 1931 the leader has worn a pink jersey, the maglia rosa. Learco Guerra wore it first.

It has been run every year since, except in the two world wars. Every winner was Italian until 1950, when Hugo Koblet of Switzerland took it.

Three men have won it five times: Alfredo Binda, Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx. Since 1965 the highest point of each year’s route has been called the Cima Coppi.

The Mountains

The Giro is decided in the mountains, and in May the high passes can still hold snow.

On 5 June 1988 the stage over the Gavia was ridden in sleet and snow, on a road the ploughs had cleared that morning. Andy Hampsten, an American, took the pink jersey that day and kept it to the finish a week later. He is still the only American to have won it.

The crowds wait on the climbs for hours, paint the riders’ names on the road, and stand close enough to touch them as they pass.

What to Know

The route is announced over the winter. Choose a mountain stage and a place near the top of a climb, where the riders are slowest and the crowd is thickest.

Arrive early. The road closes well before the race, and a caravan of sponsors’ vehicles comes through first, throwing things.

The race itself passes in minutes, and on the flat in seconds.

Country attire, and a coat for the passes.

The mistake is to follow the race by car from stage to stage. Choose two or three days in one region, and let the race come to you.

The Court

The Giro d’Italia is not the Court’s own. Hospitality at a stage finish, and a place on a mountain stage above the crowd, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay near the stages chosen, and the table afterward. The Tour de France follows in July, for a member who wants both.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.