‘Necessity’, the Mother of Invention. Origins of the Giro d’Italia
The origins of the Giro d’Italia are not difficult to discern. A young nation, increasingly obsessed with the bike both as a means of transport and recreation, looked over the border and enviously viewed the growing success story that was the Tour de France. Italy badly wanted the same for itself and shamelessly copied the idea and basic format. The Giro may have very quickly established its own identity and narrative – gloriously so in fact – and buried deep within its origins there are undoubtedly other much nobler elements but the first edition in 1909 was a commercially driven carbon copy of the Tour de France. The two great races share the same DNA, tapping into the growing mania for cycling. Both were also instigated by harassed newspaper executives looking for an irresistible long-running story to boost circulation and advertising in order to stave off bankruptcy, preferably killing off the opposition in the process. The financial imperative underpinned everything even if the main selling point was the romanticism of the challenge and the heroism and individual stories of those involved.
In France the megalomaniac who was Henry Desgrange seized the opportunity offered by the suggestion of a Tour de France and fashioned a race in his own extraordinary image. A considerable cyclist himself – he was an early holder of the Hour record in 1893 – Desgrange was fascinated by the ultimate challenge of circumnavigating France and pushing man to the limit, but as sports editor of L’Auto what he wanted most of all was to start making money and see off his main rival Le Vélo. The successful running of the 1903 Tour de France killed two birds with one stone in this respect and, although there were tough years ahead, the Tour was up and running. Meanwhile in Italy a similar scenario was unfolding. La Gazzetta dello Sport was the Italian equivalent of L’Auto, a sports-orientated cycling-friendly newspaper that was frankly struggling a bit. It had tried various wheezes such as printing on yellow and then green paper and had eventually settled, in 1898, on a rather distinctive pink. Founded on April’s Fool Day 1896 just ahead of the first of the modern-day Olympics in Athens, it published twice a week, first on Friday to carry features and preview the weekend’s events and then on Monday to bring news of everything that had unfolded.
In its first year Gazzetta had merged with the specialist cycling paper Il Ciclista e La Tripletta and had been quick to embrace the relatively new sport of cycling. The newspaper’s cycling correspondent Armando Cougnet, who had joined the newspaper as a wet-behind-the-ears 18-year-old in 1898, had been despatched to France to cover both the 1906 and 1907 Tours and had distinguished himself with his thrilling accounts although there was no particular Italian angle to report. He was, however, in the ideal position to observe how such a monumental stage race had developed and was organised logistically. The newspaper’s hands-on involvement in cycling had started in 1905 when it organised the Giro di Lombardia and continued apace in 1907 with the soon to be famous Milan–San Remo one-day classic which, curiously, morphed out of a race for motor cars the previous year. That 1906 car race produced just two finishers but the vanity of the town’s mayor had been tickled and he was soon persuaded to help sponsor a bike race from Milan to the Mediterranean resort town.
Testing the human body and spirit to the limit, along with developing technology, was a big theme in the first decade of the twentieth century and it perhaps helps to see cycling in that context. In 1907 the Peking–Paris motor-car race was established while 1908 saw the Arctic expeditions of Robert Peary and Frederick Cook and the Antarctic Nimrod expedition of Ernest Shackleton, who trekked to within 97.5 miles of the South Pole. Also in 1908 aviator Wilbur Wright – who ran a bicycle repair company with his brother Orville called the Wright Bicycle Exchange – entertained invited French guests with a series of short flights around a field near Le Mans, while the following year French aviator Louis Blériot became the first man to cross the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft. Everywhere pioneers were pushing the limits and the boundaries. The 1908 Olympics in London underlined this, being organised on a grand scale, and there was a significant leap in human performance in virtually all disciplines. One of the most noteworthy, headline-grabbing, performances of those Games came from the diminutive Dorando Pietri from Carpi in Italy who won the hearts of the sporting world for his brave efforts in the marathon when, having seemingly run the opposition to a standstill, he himself started to crack with the finish in sight at the White City Stadium. The distressed Pietri collapsed a number of times and at one stage started running in the wrong direction before being helped through the tape by officials, an act which led to his disqualification. Pietri was denied his gold medal but became a big celebrity in Italy and earned over 200,000 lire as a professional in the next three years before retiring to run a hotel in San Remo.
There was a widespread appreciation of, and fascination with, extremism and cycling fed into those sentiments. Nobody quite knew what the limits were either for the riders or their bikes and that sense of tackling the unknown was already at the heart of the Tour de France where Desgrange had set out with the idea of organising a challenge so difficult only one rider would be left standing by the end. To survive would constitute victory in Desgrange’s world. Over the border, Italy, with its huge mountain landscapes, thousands of miles of glorious coast, the rainy north and arid sun-baked south, was a land of extremes just like France. And just like France the Italian working classes had taken to the bike as an essential form of transport and those of a more competitive or compulsive nature had also adopted this mode of transport as their sport of choice. A Tour of Italy – a Giro d’Italia – was frankly a race waiting to happen. It was when not if.
Gazzetta clearly had a strong relationship with cycling in place but hitherto had lacked the financial clout to seriously consider a Giro d’Italia. That wasn’t critical until 5 August 1908 when Tullo Morgagni, Gazzetta’s sports editor, got word that a rival newspaper, Corriere della Sera, was seriously considering launching a Giro d’Italia in conjunction with giant bike manufacturing company Bianchi the following year. A disgruntled former employee of Bianchi, Angelo ‘Mici’ Gatti, had contacted Morgagni with the news that very morning and the editor immediately realised that it was crunch time. What was vitally important now was who would emerge as the organisers and owners of the race? Who would reap the rewards and harvest the prestige? Time was of the essence. Gazzetta had to be seen to be first with the idea. Gazzetta had to scoop Corriere della Sera whose original initiative the race was.
Suddenly there was the kind of explosion of activity that journalism, with its own insatiable adrenalin-fuelled need for drama, occasionally produces although the choreography of this particular episode was frenzied even by newspaper standards. On 5 August Morgagni sent a telegram to Cougnet who was in Venice on business: ‘Without delay necessity obliges Gazzetta to launch an Italian Tour. Return to Milan, Tullo.’ The harassed Morgagni also sent a similar telegram to the newspaper’s main investor, Emilo Costamagna – Cougnet was also a smaller investor at this stage – who was on holiday in Mondovi, summoning his boss to a meeting in Milan the next day. As a rule editors – certainly the wise ones who value their jobs – don’t interrupt their proprietor’s summer vacation unless they absolutely have to. But needs must. This was serious.
The following day the ‘big three’ met in Gazzetta’s offices on Piazzale Loreto in central Milan and within the space of one manic working day the Giro d’Italia was born. Cougnet, as the man who had seen how the Tour de France was run at a practical level, would have been the key individual in these discussions and as the only man who understood the mechanics of staging such an event immediately carved out a key role for himself as race director for the best part of 40 years. Next day’s Gazzetta, which appeared less than 48 hours after the panic-stricken Morgagni had hurriedly kick-started the process, proclaimed that the newspaper would be staging the first Giro d’Italia the following May. The race would be 3,000km long – a figure rather plucked out of the air – and there would be prize money of 25,000 lire, capital which, at the time of going to press, Gazzetta certainly didn’t possess. In its front-page editorial the newspaper stated: ‘The Gazzetta dello Sport, pursuant with the glory of Italian Cycling, announces that next spring will see the first “Giro d’Italia” one of the biggest, most ambitious races in international cycling.’
As Cougnet later commented, in his autobiography, about the Giro’s birth: ‘Like all babies that you hear, it squealed its way into life in the columns of Gazzetta.’ The die had been cast even if there was a large element of self-fulfilling prophecy in their bold statements. Now the newspaper somehow had to make this happen, and in a way that would suggest permanency and an ongoing annual event. In many ways the actual cycle race was the least of their worries although heaven knows that presented problems enough. But at least Cougnet had the basic template of the Tour itself to follow and to improve upon where possible. The paper had already dipped its toes into event organisation at the Milan–San Remo and the Giro di Lombardia and the public interest seemed to be growing in parallel with the general usage of bikes. Big one-day races had already been established while a number of velodromes has been built around the country to accommodate those who enjoyed track cycling. It was still a gamble, though. The bottom line was that this new event had to sell newspapers and advertising space in the newspaper or else it would be scrapped. Gazzetta dello Sport was not a charity. Much encouraged by the daily stories in the newspaper no fewer than 166 riders signed up for the race and, even though some dropped out towards May as the enormity of the challenge began to hit home, 127 competitors eventually made it to the start line in Milan.
The biggest problem was financial. Gazzetta had established this beast of an event literally overnight but didn’t really have the wherewithal yet to stage it, as Cougnet again admitted when he looked back: ‘Financially I was absolutely terrified. I was 28 years old and had a young family to support so if the thing collapsed it would threaten the newspaper and all our livelihoods. But our great project was announced and we resolved to make it happen by whatever means. We wrote about it in every issue, effectively begging for sponsorship.’
At which point happy chance intervened and a certain Primo Bongrani entered the stage, an influential friend of Cougnet and minor shareholder in the paper. Bongrani was also a clever if possibly bored accountant with the bank Cassa di Risparmio and, most importantly, the secretary of the Italian Olympic Committee. A considerable cycling fan, who had just returned from the grandiose 1908 Summer Olympics in London, Bongrani was enthused by the sound of this embryonic Giro d’Italia and immediately volunteered to take a further month’s leave from the bank to start organising the necessary funds. Bongrani knew how to crunch numbers and wasn’t afraid to talk money with those who might be willing to offload.
Bongrani negotiated successfully with a number of minor sponsors such as the fledgling motor-car manufacturers Lancia and also secured the full support – financial and otherwise – of the Italian Cycling Association. Without their official backing nothing could happen. With an eye to the future the travel agents Thomas Cook, well established in Italy, were engaged to sell spectator packages to the well heeled who might wish to follow the race from stage to stage and Bongrani then persuaded the Italian royal family to offer a gold medal for the winner. His finest achievement behind the scenes, however, was to boldly approach Corriere della Sera, still licking their wounds at missing out on the race, for financial assistance and the scheme he proposed was the donation of a then huge 3,000-lire first prize for the winner.
It was an audacious approach and yet why not? Gazzetta, having effectively gazumped their rivals, were now in full charge of the Giro d’Italia but Corriere had clearly demonstrated an appetite for such an event. They were also hurting badly having had their great project ruthlessly hijacked, but perhaps by sponsoring the winner of the first Giro they could recover some of the lost ground and again become synonymous with this wonderful race which was so laden with potential. Meanwhile, the final component of the financial package was put together by Francesco Sghirla, a Gazzetta stalwart who had helped organise the ill-starred Milan–San Remo car race. The eloquent Sghirla persuaded the Casino in San Remo to stump up all the other prize money. It had all been rather hurried and on the hoof but necessity is often the mother of invention. As Morgagni’s original telegram had said: ‘Necessity obliges Gazzetta to launch an Italian Tour.’ The Giro d’Italia was up and running.