Giro d’Italia

The Giro d'Italia is a three-week cycling stage race held each May across Italy. First run in 1909, it is one of cycling's three Grand Tours and the season's opening test for overall contenders, typically decided in the high mountains of the Alps, Dolomites and Apennines.

The Giro d’Italia is Italy’s Grand Tour, a three-week stage race that the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport first ran in 1909. Its leader wears pink, the color of the paper’s pages. Alfredo Binda, Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx have each won it five times.

How many stages are in the Giro d’Italia?

The Giro d’Italia has 21 stages and, with its rest days, lasts a little over three weeks. The route is new every year: in 2026 it ran from Nessebar in Bulgaria to Rome, 3,469 kilometers (about 2,155 miles) with 48,700 meters of climbing.

What do the Giro d’Italia jerseys mean?

The Giro has four leaders’ jerseys. The maglia rosa, pink, is for the leader of the general classification, the rider with the lowest overall time, and the maglia ciclamino, a cyclamen purple, for the leader on points, usually a sprinter. The maglia azzurra, blue, is for the best climber and the maglia bianca, white, for the best young rider, who must be under 25 at the start of the year.

The first Giro d’Italia in 1909

La Gazzetta dello Sport announced the race in a full-page headline on August 7, 1908. The first Giro left Piazzale Loreto in Milan at 2:53 in the morning on May 13, 1909. It covered 2,447 kilometers in eight stages, and Luigi Ganna won ahead of Carlo Galetti and Giovanni Rossignoli. The standings were decided on points for each rider’s place at the stage finishes.

Time was first used for the classification in 1914, in what is still the slowest Giro on record. Five of the eight stages were longer than 400 kilometers, and the 430 kilometers from Lucca to Rome is still the longest stage the race has run. Of the 81 riders who started, eight reached Milan.

Why the Giro’s leader wears pink

The leader’s jersey is pink because La Gazzetta dello Sport was printed on pink paper. Armando Cougnet, a journalist at the newspaper, introduced the maglia rosa in 1931 so that the rider leading the race could be picked out easily. Learco Guerra was the first to wear it, on May 10, 1931, after the opening stage from Milan to his home town of Mantua.

Guerra won the world road title in Copenhagen that year and the Giro in 1934. The first rider to take the jersey home was Francesco Camusso, the overall winner in 1931. Merckx wore it for 78 days, more than anyone else.

Alfredo Binda, kept out of the 1930 Giro

Binda won the Giro at his first attempt in 1925. In 1927 he won twelve of the fifteen stages, and in 1929 he won eight stages in a row. The public lost interest in a race with one possible winner, so for 1930 the Gazzetta made the Giro an invitation race and did not invite him. When Binda protested, the organizers paid him 22,500 lire, the same as the winner’s prize.

Luigi Marchisio won that Giro, which started in Sicily. Binda came back to win his fifth title in 1933. Coppi, between 1940 and 1953, and Merckx, between 1968 and 1974, also won five, and nobody has won six.

Coppi’s 192-kilometer solo from Cuneo to Pinerolo

The 1949 Giro started in Sicily. The race caravan traveled there on the motor vessel Saturnia, which stopped in Naples so the riders could train and then went on to Palermo. The writer Dino Buzzati traveled with the race, and his account of it became a book.

On the stage from Cuneo to Pinerolo, Coppi rode alone for 192 kilometers over the Colle della Maddalena, the Vars, the Izoard, the Montgenèvre and Sestriere. He finished 11 minutes 52 seconds ahead of Gino Bartali. The Giro ended on the motor racing circuit at Monza, and Coppi won it for the third time.

Snow on the Gavia pass in 1988

The Giro first climbed the Gavia in 1960, when the pass was a muddy dirt road. Imerio Massignan led over the top, punctured on the descent and finished second in Bormio to Charly Gaul. The race did not return for 28 years.

On June 5, 1988, the rain turned to snow as the riders climbed. Johan van der Velde crossed the summit first in short sleeves and started the descent without stopping for warm clothes. He had to shelter in a campervan and reached Bormio 47 minutes behind. Andy Hampsten’s 7-Eleven team had bought warm clothing for its riders, and he changed at the top. Erik Breukink beat him in the sprint for the stage, and Hampsten took the pink jersey by 15 seconds. He kept it to the finish and became the first non-European winner of the Giro.

The 2020 Giro and the final time trial in Milan

The pandemic moved the 2020 Giro from May to October. Geraint Thomas, one of the favorites, slipped on a bottle in the neutral zone before the stage to Mount Etna, broke his pelvis and left the race. His Ineos Grenadiers teammate Tao Geoghegan Hart won at Piancavallo and at Sestriere, and Jai Hindley won at Laghi di Cancano and took the pink jersey at Sestriere.

The two started the last stage, a time trial into Milan, on the same time, which had never happened in a Grand Tour. Hindley was ahead by 86 hundredths of a second. Filippo Ganna won the stage, and Geoghegan Hart was 39 seconds faster than Hindley and won the Giro.

Pogačar, Simon Yates and Vingegaard: the winners of 2024 to 2026

Tadej Pogačar rode his first Giro in 2024 and won six stages, five of them in the pink jersey. He finished 9 minutes 56 seconds ahead of Daniel Martínez and won the Tour de France that July.

In 2018 Simon Yates had led the Giro from stage 6 until the Colle delle Finestre, where Chris Froome attacked and Yates lost 38 minutes. In 2025 he came to the same climb on the second-last day, 1 minute 21 seconds behind Isaac del Toro. Yates attacked 13 kilometers from the summit, joined his teammate Wout van Aert, who had been in the breakaway, and took the jersey at Sestriere. He won the Giro in Rome the next day, nearly four minutes ahead of Del Toro.

Jonas Vingegaard started the Giro for the first time in 2026, at the age of 29. He won five stages, at Blockhaus, Corno alle Scale, Pila, Cari and Piancavallo, and took the pink jersey at Pila. He beat Felix Gall by 5 minutes 22 seconds and became the first Danish winner. With the Tour de France in 2022 and 2023 and the Vuelta a España in 2025, he is the eighth rider to have won all three Grand Tours, after Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali and Froome.

The pink jersey can change hands at the very end. In 2020 two riders started the final time trial on the same time, and in 2025 Simon Yates took the lead on the Colle delle Finestre with one stage left. The race crosses passes such as the Stelvio and the Gavia in May, and snow has taken one or the other off the route in several editions.