Stage 5

In article <[email hidden]>,

Bob Schwartz said:

The Giro visits Cremona:

The Giro has covered the road from Piacenza to Cremona
once before. If this stage sounds familiar it is because
it was none other than Francesco Moser that won it as
an individual TT in 1986.

[etc...]

Bob, this kind of informative and fascinating post, providing historical
context for racing, and enjoyable anecdotes, has no place in rbr.

When you have something about RAAM, helmets, Iraq, or Kirstin Armstrong,
get back to us.

Thanks,
-RjC, rbr agenda director

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

Bob Schwartz said:

Quoted message said:

The Giro visits Cremona:

[etc...]

Ryan Cousineau said:

When you have something about RAAM, helmets, Iraq, or Kirstin Armstrong,

Not to mention creative methods in the consumption of alcoholic
beverages.

"Bob Schwartz" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

The Giro visits Cremona:

The Giro has covered the road from Piacenza to Cremona
once before. If this stage sounds familiar it is because
it was none other than Francesco Moser that won it as
an individual TT in 1986.

The Giro first visited in 1933 when Vasco Bergamaschi
took the stage in the year of Binda's 5th and final
Giro win.

Team Time Trials in the Giro:

The Giro has not featured a lot of TTTs over the years,
and it tends to cluster them. The first was in 1937, a
stage taken by the powerhouse Legnano team headed by Gino
Bartali. This allowed Bartali to take the pink jersey
from the shoulders of Giovanni Valetti, and he would
finish with it in Milan. But we have spoken of Bartali
and Valetti before.

The TTT then disappeared until Coppi's Bianchi team won
the next one in 1953. He would win his fifth and final
Giro that year after a great struggle with Hugo Koblet.
It was a good year for the Giro. The next three years
all featured the team event, and then it disappeared again.

It resurfaced in 1981 and was part of the Giro for each
year following until 1989 with the exception of 1984.
The final TTT was the prize of the Ariostea team. It
vanished again until this year.

May 11th in the Giro:

Learco Guerra took one of his four stages in the 1931
Giro in Ravenna. He didn't win that year though. He took
three stage in 1933 including the May 11th stage to
Grosseto. He didn't win that year either.

We've been talking a lot about the 1933 Giro, and here
is another morsel. The Giro in its early years was a
pretty Italian affair. Lucien Petit-Breton led a charge
from France in 1911 and led the race for one day, that's
it. And so it was until the German Herman Buse took pink
and held it for 5 days in 1932.

But on May 11th, 1933 Jef Demuysere became the first
Belgian to wear pink. He would eventually finish second
to Binda, but Belgium would go on to take more pink
jerseys than any other country save Italy. This was
mostly due to the guy that rode for the sausage maker,
and we'll talk more about him.

Finally, Juan Carlos Dominguez won the stage on May 11th in
Groningen, a stage remembered well by two wheeled horndogs.

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~dronkert/cycling/babesonbikes/gironingen.jpg

Violins for primes?