A round-up of the most successful riders in the history of the Giro d’Italia.
The most successful riders at the Giro d’Italia, Italy’s three week grand tour, include three five-time winners and a prolific sprint stage winner, as well as a rider who might have won more times had his career not overlapped with that of the greatest rider of all time.
The most successful winners of the Tour de France tend to have achieved their feats in the 1960s, though in the Giro they go right back to 1925.
In the years following its founding in 1909, the Giro was very much a race for Italian riders. It wasn’t until after the second world war that it looked closer to the international stage race that it is now – second only to the Tour in prestige.
The Giro is held in May each year. It’s a time when the weather can be unpredictable in Italy.
You’ll often see the race passing through fields of early blossom, but it’s equally likely that there will be stages ridden through torrential downpours and that the typical third week passage through the Alps and Dolomites will see stages shortened or rerouted due to snowfall – but which stars have navigated the landscape best over the years?
RadioTimes.com brings you the most successful riders in the history of Giro d’Italia.
Most Giro d’Italia title wins
Alfredo Binda (Italy) – 5
Alfredo Binda’s five wins came in 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1933. That tally included 41 individual stage wins, as well as winning 12 of 15 stages in the 1927 race and eight stages in a row in 1929.
He wasn’t popular with the Italian fans and was so dominant, that he was paid by the race’s organisers not to compete in the 1930 race.
In Binda’s day, bikes had just two speeds (modern top spec race bikes have 24), no freewheel and riders had to dismount and manually swap the chain between the two fixed gear sprockets attached to the rear hub. They also weighed more than twice the 7kg of a modern race bike and there was limited support, hence the images of riders with a spare tyre wrapped around their shoulders. Stages were huge as well, with many stretching to over 300km.
Fausto Coppi (Italy) – 5
Although his cycling career was interrupted by the second world war, when he was held prisoner by the British for two years, Fausto Coppi won the Giro d’Italia five times. His first win was in 1940, aged just 20. He followed this with wins in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. Along with Eddy Merckx, he’s generally considered one of the greatest cyclists of all time.
Coppi is known for his great rivalry with Gino Bartali, five years his senior, which divided Italian fans. Although hired to help Bartali in the Giro, Coppi’s win in 1940 resulted in intense animosity and at one stage they refused to ride together in the same races, preferring to stop riding over helping the other. There is still a professional cycling race called Coppi e Bartali run every year in Italy, marking their rivalry.
Coppi died of malaria in 1960, aged just 40.
Eddy Merckx (Belgium) – 5
Eddy Merckx didn’t just dominate the Tour de France in the 1970s, he also won the Giro d’Italia five times, in 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973 and 1974, with the 1970, 1972 and 1974 wins being half of a Giro-Tour double. In 1968, racing his first Giro, as with his first Tour win a year later, he won the points and the king of the mountain classification as well as the race overall.
You can get a feel for Merckx’s riding style and just how tough the racing, and particularly the climbs, were on the steel bikes of the time with their limited gear range from the film The Stars and the Water Carriers. This follows the 1973 Giro d’Italia, including extensive footage of Merckx and his competitors grinding up the unpaved Passo Giau in the Dolomites.
Most Giro d’Italia stage wins
Mario Cipollini (Italy) – 42
Cipollini has the record for the most stage wins at the Giro d’Italia: 42. While Mark Cavendish has quietly racked up 34 stage wins at the Tour de France, Super Mario achieved his between 1989 and 2003 with a great deal of flamboyance.
Like Cavendish, Cipollini’s strength was in sprint finishes and he was the first rider to use a strong lead-out team to deliver him to the finishing straight, an approach later followed by every successful sprinter.
At 1.89m (6ft 2in) Cipolini was an imposing figure in the peloton, made even more so by his thick locks and his choice of outfits, earning him yet another nickname: the Lion King. He played up to this, wearing skinsuits printed with zebra and tiger prints among others. He also paraded around dressed as a Roman emperor on one of the Giro’s rest days.
Giro d’Italia multiple winners
- Alfredo Binda – 5
- Fausto Coppi – 5
- Eddy Merckx – 5
- Giovanni Brunero – 3
- Gino Bartali – 3
- Fiorenzo Magni – 3
- Felice Gimondi – 3
- Bernard Hinault – 3
- Carlo Galetti – 2
- Costante Girardengo – 2
- Giovanni Valetti – 2
- Charly Gaul – 2
- Franco Balmamion – 2
- Jacques Anquetil – 2
- Giuseppe Saronni – 2
- Miguel Indurain – 2
- Ivan Gotti – 2
- Gilberto Simoni – 2
- Paolo Savoldelli – 2
- Ivan Basso – 2
- Alberto Contador – 2
- Vincenzo Nibali – 2
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