At the 1914 Giro d’Italia, 81 riders started and eight reached Milan. It was the first Giro with a classification based on time rather than points, and the last before the war: eight stages, 3,162 km, an average of 395 km a stage. Five of the eight were longer than 400.
The night to Cuneo
They left Milan on 24 May, at night, for Cuneo: 420 km with the Sestriere along the way, where Angelo Gremo went over first before winning the stage. Soon after the start it began to rain. Three riders were disqualified for taking help from a car on the climb to the Sestriere, and after Cuneo 3701 were still in the race: after one day the Giro had lost more than half its field. On one of the early stages someone scattered nails on the road, bringing punctures and retirements, and the organisers offered 1,000 lire to whoever found the culprit.
Lucca to Rome, 430 kilometres
The third stage, on 28 May, ran from Lucca to Rome: 430 km02, the longest stage ever raced at the Giro. Lauro Bordin stayed away for about 350 km; Costante Girardengo won.
The sixth, Bari to L’Aquila, was 428 km, and the winner, Luigi Lucotti, needed more than 19 hours. Giuseppe Azzini, who had won the two previous stages, did not arrive that evening: he vanished somewhere in the last 20 or 30 kilometres, and was found the next day in a barn, with a fever. The newspapers spoke of bronchial pneumonia; the journalist Paolo Facchinetti, many years later, suspected overuse of strychnine instead. His Giro ended there.
Three hours’ penalty
On the same stage, on the Salita delle Svolte, some riders were towed by a car for a few hundred metres. The jury found three of them guilty: Alfonso Calzolari, who went back into the overall lead at L’Aquila, Carlo Durando and Clemente Canepari. Calzolari denied it. Even so, the jury did not send them home, as it had done with others: it gave each of them a three-hour penalty. Calzolari had a five-hour lead, and was left with two. The Italian cycling federation, the Unione Velocipedistica Italiana, demanded his disqualification and in Milan treated Pierino Albini as the winner. La Gazzetta dello Sport, which ran the Giro, held its ground, and in February 1915 a court found in its favour.
Calzolari won in 135h17′56″, at an average of about 23.4 km/h, the lowest in the history of the Giro, 1h55′26″03 ahead of Albini and 2h04′23″ ahead of Lucotti. Costante Girardengo, who had won the Lucca-Rome stage, did not reach Milan. The last of the eight, Umberto Ripamonti, finished more than 17 hours down. In the classification Calzolari had just over 135 hours, his three penalty hours included: more than five and a half days. Ripamonti had more than 152 and a half hours, more than six full days out of the fifteen of the Giro.
| # | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alfonso Calzolari | Stucchi | 135h17′56″ |
| 2 | Pierino Albini | Globo | +1h55′26″ or +1h57′26″ |
| 3 | Luigi Lucotti | Maino | +2h04′23″ |
| 4 | Clemente Canepari | Stucchi | +3h01′12″ |
| 5 | Enrico Sala | independent | +3h59′45″ |
| 6 | Carlo Durando | Maino | +5h12′12″ or +5h12′22″ |
| 7 | Ottavio Pratesi | Alcyon | +7h20′58″ or +9h21′47″ |
| 8 | Umberto Ripamonti | aspirante | +17h21′08″ |
| Stage | Date | Route | km | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 24 May | Milan-Cuneo | 420 | Angelo Gremo |
| 2 | 26 May | Cuneo-Lucca | 340.5 | Alfonso Calzolari |
| 3 | 28 May | Lucca-Rome | 430 | Costante Girardengo |
| 4 | 30 May | Rome-Avellino | 365.4 | Giuseppe Azzini |
| 5 | 1 June | Avellino-Bari | 328.7 | Giuseppe Azzini |
| 6 | 3 June | Bari-L’Aquila | 428 | Luigi Lucotti |
| 7 | 5 June | L’Aquila-Lugo | 429.1 | Pierino Albini |
| 8 | 7 June | Lugo-Milan | 420.3 | Pierino Albini |
In 2026 the Giro started with 184 riders and classified 151, and Jonas Vingegaard won it by 5′22″ over Felix Gall. In 1914 one rider in ten reached Milan, and the runner-up finished almost two hours behind the winner overall.
Sources
- Wikipedia (it), Giro d’Italia 1914: dates, stages, distances and winners, the time-based classification, the night start, Gremo on the Sestriere, Azzini in the barn, the Salita delle Svolte, the penalty, the federation and the court, the final classification.
- Wikipedia (en), 1914 Giro d’Italia: 81 starters and 8 finishers, the rain, the three disqualified, the nails and the reward, the three-hour penalties for Calzolari, Durando and Canepari, Calzolari’s denial, Azzini and the fever, the pneumonia and the strychnine, the lowest average, one of Durando’s two times.
- Giro d’Italia historical archive, editions 1909-1922: 44 retirements after the first stage, Lucca-Rome and Bordin’s breakaway, the towing, the Milan court, the gap between first and second.
- Podium Cafe, The 1914 Giro d’Italia: Il più duro di tutti (Internet Archive copy): the 37 left after the first stage, the three disqualified on the Sestriere, the Svolte di Popoli, Azzini vanishing in the last 20 or 30 km, the jury’s verdict, Calzolari’s denial.
- tuttoBiciweb, Bicifigurine: Alfonso Calzolari: Azzini found the next day, with a fever.
- BikeRaceInfo, 1914 Giro d’Italia: the final classification, the teams, Durando’s and Pratesi’s times.
- CyclingRevealed, 6th Giro d’Italia 1914: Sala as an isolato and Ripamonti as an aspirante, the other times for Durando and Pratesi.
- UCI, official results of the 2026 Giro d’Italia, in the fagIAnata archive.
Written with the help of Mnemosyne.