Giro d'Italia to start in Piedmont and commemorate Superga air disaster on opening day
TURIN, Italy (AP) — Next year’s Giro d’Italia will start in the Piedmont region on May 4 and the opening stage will commemorate the 1949 Superga air disaster that killed the entire Torino soccer team.
Race organizers on Monday revealed the first few stages of the Italian Grand Tour, which will begin with a 136-kilometer (85-mile) route from Venaria Reale to Turin. That stage will go over the Superga hill where the Torino team's plane crashed, to mark the 75th anniversary of the tragedy.
All 31 people on board the plane died, including the team nicknamed “Grande Torino” after it won the past five Italian league titles.
The winner of the opening stage will be awarded a special “maglia rosa” — the leader’s pink jersey — which will have the words “Solo il Fato li vinse”, or “Only Fate defeated them,” written on the inside of the collar, in Torino’s colors.
The second stage is an undulating 150-kilometer (93-mile) route from San Francesco al Campo to Santuario di Oropa, just outside Biella. It features three classified climbs, including a top category uphill finish.
The sprinters will get their first chance of the race on stage three, which is a mainly flat, 165-kilometer (103-mile) route from Novara to Fossano.
Stage four will also start in Piedmont, in Acqui Terme, but it will then leave the region and will be detailed when the full route is revealed on Oct. 13 in Trento.
Primož Roglič won this year's Giro.
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