URBAN GIRO - Stage 21: Milan (May 30, 2021)

The Giro is often presented through its epic mountain scenery and iconic climbs. But the corsa rosa also has an intimate and important relationship with the cities, towns and urban centres of the bel paese. Procycling looks at the geography, culture and racing history of the 2021 route's population centres 

by Barry Ryan

Procycling UK - May 2021 

Last October, a rider who had just finished the Giro d’Italia entered the terrace of a café on a back street behind the Duomo, perched his bike against the window and ordered a beer. In any other town in Italy, a passer-by would have instantly demanded a selfie or a water bottle, but here, nobody batted an eyelid as the man in the skinsuit took his seat among them. In Milan, they’ve seen it all before.

Nowhere has hosted the finish of the Giro as often, but the city that waved the first edition away from Piazzale Loreto in the early hours of May 13, 1909 hasn’t always been as willing to welcome the race back. Unlike the Tour in Paris, the Giro’s last stage is a moveable feast.

In the 1980s, nine years in a row went by without a Milanese finish, and seven of the last 12 editions have also concluded elsewhere, as RCS Sport sometimes struggled to convince its hometown that the honour was worth the outlay. Like so many vast cities, Milan’s relationship with bicycles is mixed.

On the day the postponed 2020 Giro ought to have concluded last May, a socially distanced flash mob of 400 cyclists gathered on Piazza del Duomo to lobby the council to invest in the city’s scant cycling infrastructure. Cycling’s heartlands have traditionally been rural and so the trend towards increasing urban living, in Italy and beyond, seems to pose an existential threat to the sport of cycling. And yet there was a counter argument when the Giro entered Milan last October, and Tao Geoghegan Hart, raised in one of Europe’s biggest conurbations, wore pink beneath the Duomo.

Towards the end of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, it is suggested that metropolitan living can create a form of hell, but in the same breath, a coping mechanism is suggested: “Learn to recognise who and what, in the midst of hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space.” The urban cyclist can appreciate the sentiment.

STAGE 21 - Sun 30 May - 29.4km ITT

SENAGO - MILAN

A flat time trial into Milan for the second year in a row, which could prove decisive as it did in October. Anything other than a procession is a good thing, with a stage and a race up for grabs. If the GC is still close here, the advantage will be with whichever climber can TT the best.