Appointment Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 October
IVREA. The Canavese roads will be the protagonists of the autumn classics organized by RCS Sport, which will bring great cycling back to Piedmont after the spring “binge”, when five stages of the Giro d’Italia were raced in our region. The appointment is for Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 October, when Milan-Turin and Gran Piemonte will be played in order.
On the 6th the Canavese will be interested in the middle of the Milan-Turin route which, starting in Magenta, will end in Superga, with the traditional double ascent of the climb that leads to the Basilica. After leaving Lombardy, the race will pass through Novara and Vercelli and then set off towards the Biellese. From Zimone, crossing the Serra, the runners will enter Canavese: Piverone, then Albiano d’Ivrea e Cossano, before heading to Borgo d’Ale and from here focus on the Savoy capital. There will be 189 km to cover, mostly flat, but the double ascent to Colle di Superga means that it becomes, in the final stretch, the classic race for climbers, or at least as a finisseur. It is no coincidence that in recent years cyclists have imposed themselves on the climb at the foot of the Sanctuary: Miguel Ángel López, Rigoberto Uran, Thibaut Pinot and Michael Woods. The 2020 edition is not valid, which instead of Superga ended on the straight flat of the Stupinigi Hunting Lodge, with the victory of a sprinter of the level of Arnaud Demare.
The next day, Canavese protagonist of the first 60 km of the Gran Piemonte, which will start from Rocca Canavese, which for the first time will host a major international cycling event. From Rocca the race will unfold through Rivara, Cuorgnè, Castellamonte, Torre, Saint martinCanavese, Loranzè, Ivrea, Bollengo and will cross the Serra again, in the opposite direction to the day before, climbing the hairpin bends of the Broglina. The arrival, after 168 km, will be in Borgosesia, in that Valsesia which this year was the protagonist of one of the most beautiful stages of the 2021 Giro, the Abbiategrasso-Alpe di Mera, won by Simon Yates ahead of João Almeida and Egan Bernal. It will be a Gran Piemonte dedicated to sprinters: the track is substantially devoid of roughness, with the last five kilometers constantly uphill on medium-width roads before the final straight.
The presentation on Friday morning at the regional headquarters marked a new, important step in the return to normality, both in sport and in life, as Stefano Diciatteo, RCS Sport Press Office coordinator underlined: “It’s a real emotion: this is the first press conference in attendance for a year and a half now ».
That cycling is an important vehicle for the run-up to normality was also underlined by Paolo Bellino, CEO of RCS Sport, Turin with Canavese blood (his paternal family is from Cuorgnè): “The return of racing last year marked the end of the hardest period, the Giro 2021, which started right from Turin, has seen a return to almost normalcy and now we are moving forward, after having lived through two decidedly difficult seasons ».
The mayor of Rocca Canavese, Alessandro Lajolo, who among other things is a former cyclist, is rightly proud: «We are a town of less than 2,000 inhabitants that has the honor of hosting the start of such an important race. We are the demonstration of how important it is to be a team: we do not get our heads together, we know that we are a follower who does his part to contribute to the success of the whole territory, driven by the great realities of our region ». Federico Bona