The fact that on the first Saturday of May, 2021, the Giro will take off from Turin could be a sign that things have gradually gone back to some sort of normal. Sure, the start and finish lines won’t be packed with the usual crowds behind the barriers, but on 8th May, 2021, the Giro will again accompany the lives of Italians around the peninsula.
Some will be curious as to what’s new after such a difficult year.
Geographically speaking, it’s hard to say because, throughout its 103 editions, the Giro, like Napoleon and Garibaldi, has been most everywhere. Nevertheless, it’s nice to think it will touch routes that usually welcome bike tourism, like the lands of Medieval culture along the Piacenza – Sestola, or on the Strade Bianche of Tuscany in the final kilometres that lead to Montalcino (stage 11). It will also offer the wonderful opportunity to discover the small yet little-known gem that is Ascoli Piceno, at the peak of a very demanding leg.
Then come the sites that are legend: Zoncolan, Fedaia, Pordoi, Giau, Spluga, Madesimo and even Mottarone.
However, the novel things that this troubled year has brought with it are not to be found in the course.
What the Giro d’Italia 2021 will consecrate is the new buzz created around cycling, which has proven to be one of the most effective ways for reversing the tide on the virus. Today, many believe that cycling is indeed “the medicine of the future”.
For weeks now, the roads on which the Giro will take place between 8th and 30th May, 2021, with the exception of the highest passes, where circulation still hasn’t resumed following the heavy winter snowfalls, have already been tested by tens of thousands of cycling enthusiasts, many of whom still trying to get some distance under their belt for the first time.
Of course, as Daniele Bennati argued, in Italy there is still a long way to go before cycling is in any way comparable to the importance it holds in French and Belgian Flanders. Nonetheless, it has been some time since anyone has seen so many cyclists. Almost like a preview of the Giro d’Italia.
On the platform set up in Turin’s Piazza Castello, it won’t just be racers at the starting line but a new movement that places cycling among the much-needed elements for feeling a little bit freer, happier and healthier.
Wilier Triestina will be at the Giro d’Italia with Team Astana Premier Tech and Alexandr Vlasov, Luis Leon Sanchez, Gorka Izagirre, Harold Tejada, Samuele Battistella, Fabio Felline, Vadim Pronskiy and Matteo Sobrero, but most of all we will stand alongside those of all ages who have chosen cycling as their very own, personal “medicine of the future”.
