Cyclopedia (23 page)

GIANT
Taiwanese company that is the biggest bike maker in the world, shifting over five million bikes in 2007, making bikes under its own name and under contract to other producers. It is a relative newcomer. Founded in 1972 by a Japanese engineer named King Liu who needed a new venture when his eel-farming business was wiped out by a typhoon, Giant began by making bikes for other companies,
primarily USA's leading mass-market bike-makers SCHWINN; eventually the American company shifted more and more of its production to Taiwan until Giant was effectively on equal terms.

Giant's first own-brand machines didn't come out until 1986 but found a ready market in the US, and the company rode the mountain-bike boom with the rest. The key change came in the mid-1990s when Giant was the first company to bring out a compact-framed machine, the TCR (see MIKE BURROWS to read about the British designer who came up with the idea), which rapidly earned a strong reputation.

In Europe deals to sponsor the Spanish ONCE team and later T-Mobile and Rabobank helped to raise Giant's profile, and earned the company credibility in the rapidly growing market for bikes to use in CYCLOSPORTIVES. Giant played a large part in popularizing off-the-rack frames, a major change in the industry that led to casualties among smaller custom frame makers (see FRAMES—MAKERS).

GIRO D'ITALIA
Like its elder brother, the TOUR DE FRANCE, the Italian equivalent was born of a circulation battle between rival newspapers. Unlike the Tour, after over a century in existence the Giro is still sponsored by its original backer, the daily
La Gazzetta dello Sport
, with a pink leader's jersey to match the pink pages of the paper.

“Absolutely essential for the paper you announce immediately the cycling Tour of Italy,” read the telegram sent to the paper's cycling editor Armando Cougnet in August 1908; his boss had heard rumors that the rival
Corriere dello Sport
was about to run a Tour of Italy, and a preemptive strike was required in spite of the fact that
Gazzetta
was strapped for cash.

The first Giro began on May 13, 1909, in Italy's financial capital, Milan, and finished
there 17 days later after eight stages taking in Bologna, Chieti, Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Turin. The winner was a stonemason, Luigi Ganna.

The 1920s were dominated by ALFREDO BINDA, while the 1930s began with the introduction of the pink jersey (1931) and ended with the emergence of GINO BARTALI. The year 1940, on the other hand, offered a foretaste of one of cycling's greatest RIVALRIES, when FAUSTO COPPI defeated Bartali to become the youngest winner ever, aged just 20.

After the close of the Second World War, the Giro was seen as a symbol of Italy getting back on its feet, with the first postwar edition christened the
Giro di Rinascita
: the Giro of Rebirth. The symbolism of sending cyclists from one end of the country to the other over roads ravaged by the war—in some cases they had to walk across temporary bridges—was impossible to ignore. The race proved that the country was on the move again.

The Giro has visited all Italy, including offshore islands such as Elba, and even running a time trial alongside Venice's canals to finish in Piazza San Marco (1978). From its earliest years, the race was hailed by
La Gazzetta dello Sport
as a way of uniting a country that had been a political whole for less than half a century.

The Giro has achieved that with a unique blend of heroism and skulduggery. The race is always run in late spring, when the climbs in the DOLOMITES are always vulnerable to foul weather; some of the greatest episodes (see 164) have taken place in snowstorms. The passion of the
tifosi—
Italy's crazily enthusiastic fans—means that foreign leaders have always found it hard to win; on occasions the fans have been seen to push their heroes up the great mountain passes, completely falsifying the results. At least one Giro, 1984, was decided largely because the organizer Vincenzo Torriani preferred a home
winner, FRANCESCO MOSER, to the Frenchman LAURENT FIGNON.

Particularly mountainous routes were devised in 1998 and 1999 to assist the climber MARCO PANTANI but the plan backfired in 1999 when Pantani was dominant until he was thrown off the race for failing a blood test, one of the biggest drugs scandals ever to hit cycling (see DRUGS for other major scandals in the sport and the Giro).

Even though one Italian star after another has fallen to the drugs testers, the Giro has retained its magic against
the odds, helped by the passion of the
tifosi
and the arrival of foreign stars such as MARK CAVENDISH, who won a total of five stages in the race in 2008–9. The decision of LANCE ARMSTRONG to race the 2009 event simply added to the sense that the Giro was back to its old self after several difficult years.

GIRO DI LOMBARDIA
The “race of the falling leaves” closes the professional cycle-racing year. Mellow mists and chilly rain often feature, and sometimes the first winter snow can be spotted on the ALPS. Afterward, farewells are said before the close season, and retirements quietly celebrated. Amusingly, the “falling leaves” themselves sometimes play a role: in 1992 the world champion Gianni Bugno was the big favorite, and the route had been arranged to finish in his home town, Monza, but he lost the race because he was too scared of crashing on the descents, which had been turned into skating rinks by the leaves and heavy rain.

Like the other MONUMENTS, Lombardy is a key link with cycle racing's origins. This was the first major race in Italy, although it is not the oldest (that honour goes to Milan–Turin, first run in 1876). It was founded in 1905, when Giovanni Gerbi was the winner, and run over tracks so bad that the field had to push their bikes for hundreds of meters at a time. Part of the route ran along a streetcar line.

Since then, the course has changed time and again. It has run through some of the highest passes in the Alpine foothills, and finished variously in Milan, Como, Monza, and Bergamo.

It retains two constants: the mountains that border the lakes north of Milan, Lecco and Como, and the climb to the chapel at Madonna del Ghisallo (see CHAPELS for the significance of this landmark).

That ascent kick-started the career of cycling great ALFREDO BINDA, who turned professional in 1924 spurred on by the thought of a 500-lire prize awarded outside the chapel: he won it and never looked back. Lombardy was also where the Classic-winning career of SEAN KELLY took off in 1983; the Irishman also scored one of his greatest wins here in 1991.

The record winner is FAUSTO COPPI, who took four successive victories between 1946 and 1949, added another in 1954 and came agonizingly close in 1956,
overtaken just two meters from the line in a defeat that summed up his painful decline. The DOUBLE of world championship victory and Lombardy in the same year is a rare feat. The only riders who have managed it are Binda (1931), TOM SIMPSON (1965), EDDY MERCKX (1971), and the Swiss Oscar Camenzind (1998).

GRASS TRACK RACING
Dates back to cycling's 19th-century origins; racing on short oval circuits traced out on sports fields. The races are similar to those in conventional track racing, but usually shorter. Most popular now in Scotland, where a small group of semiprofessionals make a living in summer on a circuit of events run at the Highland Games alongside caber-tossing and throwing the stone. There is also a British grass track league with a handful of weekend meetings. Tracks tend to be between 300–400 meters and are usually marked out with a painted white line and colored pegs and string. There are usually no bankings, although the Yorkshire town of Richmond boasts a very fine banked grass vélodrome, 362 meters around, at the cricket club. Racing has been going on here since 1892 when penny farthings were used, and the town's population would quadruple as spectators flocked to watch track meetings.

Bikes for grass track racing are similar to those used on paved or wooden tracks—single fixed gear, no brakes—but the gearing is lower, because grass is far harder to pedal through, no matter how short it is cut. The cranks may be slightly shorter as well, to lessen the risk of a pedal touching the ground on the curves, while wheels will be heavy-duty, with fatter tires than usual to ease out the bumps. The tires may be “tied” to the rim as well as glued, so
that they will not slip off the rim when cornering. Specialists will take several sets of wheels and tires with them, then decide which to use depending on the conditions.