The Giro d’Italia is a show, perhaps in recent years with fewer and fewer champions, but a great tradition. And above all history and memory. Respect, gratitude, homage. So many things for which it is considered the event of the Italians.
For this reason, even if the 2022 edition next May has yet to take place, complete with the third to last Friulian stage, the Marano Lagunare-Castelmonte one on May 27, further confirmation of how the pink race in these parts is now at home, more than something is also moves in view of that 2023.
Emilia Romagna, which dreams of even the start of the Tour de France 2024 in a fascinating ticket with Tuscany, has already raised its hand for the pink start of 2023. Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto, on the other hand, also taking advantage of the consolidated political axis “In green sauce” between presidents Massimiliano Fedriga and Luca Zaia, have launched a detailed project to bring the pink race to the North East also in May 2023 and, in a stage of great symbolic significance, pay homage to the two thousand victims of the immense tragedy of Vajont, whose sixty years will occur on 9 October 2023.
Ten years later
It is not new that the tadpoles pass through Valcellina and then to Erto and Casso and the Piave valley, the places of the tragedy. After a passage in 2011, he heads towards the Dolomites and Torri del Vajolet, nine years ago, half a century after that tragedy, a perennial warning of how nature takes a moment to rebel against man’s wickedness, the arrival of the fifteenth stage of the Giro it was in Erto e Casso, one km after the dam.
The Lithuanian Ramunas Navardauskas won a mid-mountain stage that started from Cave del Predil and returned to Friuli after a passage in Carnia, the ascent of Sella Ciampigotto, the Venetian stretch up to Longarone and the final ascent. The day before Vincenzo Nibali on Montasio put another piece in his first Giro d’Italia. Then, at the finish of Erto and Casso, after having passed with the group of the best one step away from the dam-warning, with beautiful and heartfelt words he paid homage to the victims of that disaster.
The two-region plan
Now the plan of Fvg and Veneto is to bring the pink race back to these latitudes next year. A letter from the two Governors has already been sent to RCS. They know that the Giro is an unmissable resource for their territories and they try to fill in the boxes of the pink race by “dividing” the stages a little without making war. Enzo Cainero, the patron of the Friulian hamlets for twenty years, therefore already works on two fronts.
The Castelmonte 2022 stage and the Vajont one. Indeed of Vajont, because this will be the big news 2023. The manager also yesterday in the “Spazio Sport” broadcast on Monday to RadioSpazio103 confirmed it: «We would like to pay a great tribute to Vajont, we are working together with Veneto». He didn’t reveal anything else.
The new Vajont
But there is much more. The arrival of the stage will not be at the dam, as ten years before, but in the municipality of Vajont, a stone’s throw from Maniago, 50 km from the site of the disaster where, in the years following the disaster, part of the displaced began to gather. The municipality, founded in 1971, now has 1,700 inhabitants. It bears a heavy name that evokes a massacre, but it is also a warning to humanity and, together with Erto and Casso and Longarone, a look to the future in constant respect for those victims.
Here, Cainero’s idea is to get a mid-mountain stage, in short, not too difficult, to that village at the foot of the mountains, after the caravan has crossed the Valcellina, the places of the tragedy, Longarone and the valley of the Piave. In short, the stage of the memory of the Vajont in Vajont. Spectacular. Needless to say, given the sensitivity in recent years shown by the organizers of the Giro, and in particular by the director Mauro Vegni (see the arrivals at Belice or L’Aquila, the departure in Rigopiano in recent years), the path to a success of the plan both downhill.
The queen stage
Yes, the descent. There will be none, except for the spectators who will descend to the valley after the stage, in what in the dreams of Cainero (and of President Fedriga, who lives there) should be the queen stage of the 2023 edition of the pink race: the Lussari time trial.
Were it not for the pandemic, probably, the enterprise would have already succeeded the Friulian organizer, Covid has complicated a lot because it slowed down the 1.7 million euro work to make the road that leads from Valsaisera to the Sanctuary safe.
The compaction – not asphalting mind you – of the surface will allow the arrival of the Giro with a time trial that, in the first ten km from Tarvisio, should take the riders on the Alpe Adria cycle path under the mountain and then, in the remaining 10, splash in altitude at 1,700 meters of the Sanctuary with slopes greater than 10 percent.
A crucial stage, a watershed, alongside, the day before or the day after, the “softer” part of the memory. Moreover, in the month of the meeting of the Alpine troops in Udine. «Or Lussari or Morte», Cainero reiterated yesterday on the radio. In short, the possibilities are high.
The setback to “mamma Rai”
With RCS which, news on Monday, for the next 5 years, an epochal revolution, will also take care of the production of images. In short, Rai will have the rights of the Giro d’Italia for 5 years, but the production, like the Tour, will be borne by the organizers. For “Mamma Rai” a nice setback.
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