For people who watched the race and want to understand what they saw. La fagIAnata covers road cycling with data and with artificial intelligence: the times, the watts, the wind, the gaps, and the odds before the start. It is a project by Tinke, a company that develops artificial intelligence systems.
The name comes from the Italian word Riccardo Magrini brought into race commentary: a fagianata is the attack nobody sees get away. No surge, no noise, and by the time the bunch notices, it’s gone. That’s how we’d like to write.
Who we write for
First, for people who watch the races and know what a watt is. Then for people who love numbers and want to see all of them. And for people who follow women’s cycling, which we cover with the same numbers as the men’s. If you’ve just switched on the TV and want to know where the race is, everything is on the race page, with the live coverage.
What cycling we cover
- Professional road racing, men and women: Classics, Monuments, Grand Tours, the whole calendar.
- The Italians, wherever they race: they are the thread that ties everything else together.
- Cyclocross and track racing in the winter, with the calendars (cyclocross and track) and the results; for cyclocross, the fagIAno too.
- Under-23s in the main Italian races; juniors, who are minors, only in the data: in the results and in the rider pages.
Four formats
Every piece has a job, and the section it sits in tells you which.
- Preview: before the start. The route, the wind, the favorites, where it can be decided.
- News: as soon as the race is over. Who won, how, and our numbers.
- Analysis: the day after. The times on the climbs, the VAM, watts per kilo, the gaps.
- Stories: cycling as it was, built on our archive, with the sources.
Around them are the race pages, with the day’s races live, the rider pages and the fagIAno.
The fagIAno
The fagIAno (Italian for “the pheasant”, the bird in our logo) gives every starter a probability of winning. Before the start the probabilities are frozen, with a SHA-256 fingerprint that lets anyone check they haven’t changed since. After the finish we print the receipt: what we said, what happened. Even when we got it wrong. All the receipts are in the fagIAno’s record; how it works is in How we work.
How we write
Short sentences, numbers with a range, no superlatives. The headline says what happened. When the fagIAno gets it right and when it gets it wrong, we say so the same way: at Il Lombardia we gave Paul Seixas 11%. He won. The receipt is on the race page.
Our manifesto, in eight points
- Every number has a source and a range. Official numbers come from the UCI and the organizers; the ones we estimate come with their interval, or with «about».
- Predictions are frozen before the start, and the receipt always comes out.
- The headline says what happened. No questions, no exclamation marks.
- No gossip, no private lives, no suspicion. Watts don’t accuse anyone.
- No made-up quotes, no fake photos. Words in quotation marks come from official statements; the photos are real, with author and license.
- AI computes, reads and writes, and we say so. If a piece doesn’t pass our checks, it doesn’t go out.
- Mistakes are corrected in public, with the date, and ties with teams are stated in the piece. All corrections are on one page.
- No ads. The reader is not the product.
Where the data come from, what artificial intelligence does and doesn’t do, how the news goes out and how we correct mistakes: it’s all in How we work.
For teams
Tinke develops artificial intelligence tools for WorldTeams and ProTeams, and is open to partnerships. The newsroom and the tools stay separate: when we write about a team we work with, we say so in the piece. Learn more.
For race organizers
From a distance we cover races with what is public; up close you see better. If you invite us, we collect more precise data on the spot, and we arrive quietly, like a pheasant on foot. How it works.
Who’s behind it
Tinke, a company that develops artificial intelligence systems. Legal notice · Privacy · Contact.