At the 1924 Giro d’Italia, 90 riders started, and the final classification lists 30. On 1 June someone else rode into Milan who is not in that classification: Alfonsina Strada, 33, from Castelfranco Emilia, the only woman ever to have ridden the men’s Giro.
A Giro without champions
That year the big names were missing. Costante Girardengo, Giovanni Brunero, Ottavio Bottecchia and Gaetano Belloni stayed at home over a dispute with the organisers about fees, and the bicycle makers’ teams did not turn up. La Gazzetta dello Sport then opened the Giro to independent riders, with no team, and offered them board and lodging. Among the entries accepted by Emilio Colombo and Armando Cougnet was Alfonsina’s, born Morini, whom the Gazzetta presented in the days before the start as Alfonsin Strada. She worked as a seamstress, and the Giro was also a way to support her family: her husband, Luigi Strada, had fallen seriously ill.
She left Milan on 10 May wearing number 7201. The Giro had 12 stages and 3,613 km, an average of 301 km a stage, and nine of the twelve were longer than 280 km. She finished each of the first seven inside the time limit, and came in last in only two.
| Stage | Date | Route | km |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 May | Milan-Genoa | 300.3 |
| 2 | 12 May | Genoa-Florence | 307.9 |
| 3 | 14 May | Florence-Rome | 284.4 |
| 4 | 16 May | Rome-Naples | 249.3 |
| 5 | 18 May | Potenza-Taranto | 265.3 |
| 6 | 20 May | Taranto-Foggia | 230.3 |
| 7 | 22 May | Foggia-L’Aquila | 304.3 |
| 8 | 24 May | L’Aquila-Perugia | 296 |
| 9 | 26 May | Perugia-Bologna | 280.7 |
| 10 | 28 May | Bologna-Fiume | 415 |
| 11 | 30 May | Fiume-Verona | 366.5 |
| 12 | 1 June | Verona-Milan | 313 |
L’Aquila to Perugia
The eighth stage, on 24 May, ran from L’Aquila to Perugia: 296 km02. Alfonsina crashed several times and reached Perugia some fifteen hours after the start, outside the time limit. The Giro’s website says she arrived in the middle of the night, and that in one crash she broke her handlebars and fixed them with a broom handle. The broom handle is a legend: accounts disagree on where it happened, and we have not found it in a report from the time.
For the jury she was out. Emilio Colombo, the editor of the Gazzetta, decided to pay for her lodging so that she could go on: she would ride the remaining stages, but her times would no longer count in the classification. Two days earlier, in L’Aquila, Colombo had handed her the 500 lire of a collection among the Gazzetta’s readers; she is said to have used the money to pay the fees of the institution where her husband was being treated and of her niece’s boarding school. She kept going. The tenth stage, Bologna to Fiume, was 415 km, the longest of that Giro, and it took her about 21 hours. On 1 June she was in Milan.
The Giro was won by Giuseppe Enrici, 58′21″ ahead of Federico Gay. The classification closed with 30 of 9003. She arrived with them, without a place on that list.
Before and after
She had raced with the men before: in 1917 and 1918 she had finished the Giro di Lombardia, the second time in 21st place. She died in Milan on 13 September 1959, aged 68, on her way back from the Tre Valli Varesine, while trying to restart her Guzzi motorcycle.
The highest point of the Giro d’Italia Women is now called the Cima Alfonsina Strada: in 2026 it was the Colle delle Finestre, but an unstable sheet of ice above the road moved the finish to about a kilometre below the top. At the 2026 women’s Giro 147 riders started and 115 were classified, and Demi Vollering won by 30 seconds over Antonia Niedermaier. At the men’s Giro, since 1924, no woman has started again.
Sources
- Wikipedia (it), Alfonsina Strada: birth, her husband Luigi Strada, the name in the Gazzetta, the race number, 90 starters and 30 finishers, the readers’ collection, Bologna-Fiume, the 1918 Lombardia, her death.
- Wikipedia (en), Alfonsina Strada and Wikipedia (fr): birth, the 1917 and 1918 Lombardia, the Tre Valli Varesine.
- Wikipedia (it), Giro d’Italia 1924: stages, distances, classification, the two stages she finished last.
- Wikipedia (en), 1924 Giro d’Italia: the absentees and why, the independent riders, the first seven stages, the eighth, the fifteen hours.
- Bike Race Info, 1924 Giro d’Italia: the absentees, board and lodging paid by the Giro, 90 starters and 30 classified, Colombo paying her lodging after Perugia.
- Il Foglio, Quando il ciclismo era Strade Bianche (2020): her placings stage by stage, last in the sixth and the seventh.
- giroditalia.it, Ricordi da… Perugia, 1924: la resilienza di Alfonsina Morini Strada: the seamstress, her husband’s illness, L’Aquila-Perugia, the night arrival, the broom handle, Emilio Colombo, the arrival in Milan.
- Giro d’Italia historical archive, editions 1923-1932: number 72, the boycott, out of time in Perugia, on to Milan outside the classification.
- Wikipedia (en), 2026 Giro d’Italia Women: the Cima Alfonsina Strada on the Colle delle Finestre, the shortened stage.
- Cyclingnews, the shortened Colle delle Finestre stage (6 June 2026): the finish moved to a kilometre below the top.
- UCI, official results of the 2026 Giro d’Italia Women: starters and classified riders, the gap between Vollering and Niedermaier.
Written with the help of Mnemosyne.