Giro d’Italia 2022 – Stages, schedule, route map and key dates in the battle for maglia rosa in Italy

Spring has well and truly sprung, which means it’s time for the first three-week race of the season. The Giro d’Italia is the Grand Tour your Rapha membership-owning friend will always assert is the finest of the three. It just has a certain… “Je ne sais quoi,” they’ll say with a knowing smile before taking a sip from their espresso doppio.

Ad/> More annoying than the affectations of your pseudo-sophisticated pal is the nagging suspicion that they might be right. CyclingBlazin’ Saddles: The best riders and teams of the spring Classics – and biggest disappointments25/04/2022 AT 14:30 The Giro is the Grand Tour of Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali, Francesco Moser and Giuseppe Saronni. More recently that of Damiano Cunego, Ivan Basso and Michele Scarponi.

Its most celebrated mountain passes all sound more romantic than their gaudy gaulish equivalents: the Passo dello Stelvio and the Gavia; the Colle dell’Agnello and the Colle del Finestre; the Mortirolo and Tre Cime di Lavaredo. It’s the Vuelta with an all-star startlist, or the Tour but a lot more fun. Nowhere has that fun been better depicted than in Jorgen Leths’ 1974 documentary, Stars and Watercarriers — which, by the way, your pal also prefers to A Sunday in Hell.

The victuals are also vital — it is the only Grand Tour that takes the time to celebrate both food and drink. In this edition the former takes place on Stage 11. The start town, Santarcangelo di Romagna, is famous for its onions, sold on the street and eaten raw with radicchio, extra virgin olive oil, Sangiovese wine vinegar and grilled sausage.