Rumours of up to 70km of individual time trialling leaked
The map of the Giro d'Italia 2024 Grande Partenza(Image credit: RCS)
The Giro d'Italia organisers have officially confirmed that the race will start in Turin, Piemonte in 2024, for the fourth time in its history and the second time in four years. The full route will be published on Friday this week.
As was widely rumoured, the race will kick off on Saturday, May 4 with a mass start stage from Venaria Reale on the outskirts of the city and finish in the city centre, while stage 2 will finish on the summit of Oropa in the north of the Piemonte region.
While stage 1 is set to be a repeat of the hilly 2022 stage through Turin, but with fewer climbs, stage 2 will be the earliest major mountaintop test for the Giro d’Italia since it began in Sicily in 1989 and went up Mount Etna on its second day.
The Giro d'Italia already started in Venaria Reale in 2011 with a team time trial, won by HTC-HighRoad. Ten years later in 2021 when it last began in Turin, the stage was an individual time trial won – for the second year running – by Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers).
La Gazzetta dello Sport notes that the start date is exactly 75 years after the major air tragedy on the hill of Superga, where on May 4th, 1949, a plane carrying Turin’s football team, known locally as Grande Torino, crashed into the climb on the outskirts of the city and all 31 people on board died. That year's winner, Fausto Coppi, dedicated his victory to Ezio Loik, a midfielder who was on board the plane.
"The 107th edition will be a homage to Grande Torino," the paper stated, and the first stage, just 136km long, will include the Superga climb at its mid-way point to honour their memory and the anniversary of the crash. The cat. 2 Colle Magdalena, with its summit 20km from the finish could well decide the winner and first race leader.
The Oropa finish also marks an anniversary, as it takes place 25 years after Marco Pantani's famous victory on the Piemontese climb. Oropa was last tackled in the 2017 Giro d'Italia, with victory going to the overall champion of that year's edition, Tom Dumoulin, and with only two cat. 3 climbs preceding it, will likely be the crunch moment of stage 2.
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A third stage will take place in Piemonte, running south from Novara to Fossano, which will likely end in a bunch sprint before stage 4, starting in Acqui Terme, takes the race out of the northwesterly region.
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The route profile of stage 1 of the 2024 Giro d'Italia(Image credit: Getty Images)
The route profile of stage 2 of the 2024 Giro d'Italia(Image credit: RCS)
The route profile of stage 3 of the 2024 Giro d'Italia(Image credit: RCS)
Piemonte has a strong cycling history, with the current crop of pros hailing from the region including Ganna, Fabio Felline, Alessandro Covi, Matteo Sobrero, and Niccolo Bonifazio. Italian cycling legend and multiple Giro winners Fausto Coppi, Constance Girardengo, Giovanni Brunero, Franco Balmamion, and Giuseppe Saronni are also Piemontese.
More rumoured details for the 2024 route also appeared on Monday on Cicloweb. The race's strong emphasis on time trialling looks set to continue for another year, with races against the clock in Perugia late in the first week and another in Desenzano towards the end of the second.
Although Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) is highly unlikely to take part in next year’s Giro for a third straight year, such a high number of kilometres of time trialling – up to 70 in total – could attract other top specialists.
That said, the Giro's predilection for mountain climbing is once again in evidence: apart from the ascent of Oropa on the first weekend, a stage up the Prati di Tivo in the Apennines is rumoured as a final curtain for the first week, and ascents of the Monte Grappa climbs are also likely at the end of the third.
Yet more climbing could feature just after the second rest day in Livigno, with a summit finish at Monte Pana preceded by an ascent of the Stelvio, this year's Cima Coppi, opening up the third.
As in 2023, the race concludes with a long transfer from the north of Italy for a final sprint stage through the streets of Rome, next year on Sunday May 26.
The full 2024 Giro d'Italia route is set to be unveiled in full on October 13 in the city of Trento as part of the Gazzetta dello Sport Festival of Sport celebrations. The route of the Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile, the first to be organised by RCS, will also be revealed on October 13.
As yet, no details have been leaked of the Giro d'Italia Donne, as it is popularly known, with the only current advance information being its start and finish dates of July 7-14.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
