Legendary duels, left-field business moves, and the role of La Gazzetta: How RCS turned the Giro d'Italia into a national treasure, and a billion Euro event

The Giro d'Italia is far more than a bike race. It's a three-week celebration of cycling that showcases Italy's beauty and culture better than a plate of pasta, an Aperol spritz, or an Armani fashion show.

The 21 stages of the Corsa Rosa visit every corner and highlight every geographical detail of the 'Bel Paese.' The Giro covers the barren but beautiful roads of the south, climbs into the steep central Apennine hills, skirts the long coastlines, passes through historical towns and villages, and then high into the mountains in the third and decisive week of racing.

Race organiser RCS Sport loves to describe the Giro as 'The toughest race in the world in the world’s most beautiful place'. It is a marketing spin, but it also evokes the Giro's unique beauty. There is nothing like seeing the peloton ride through the snow-covered Dolomites, contest a sprint around the Bay of Naples or celebrate reaching the finish in Rome with laps of the Colosseum.

The Giro marks time as the Italian spring gradually becomes summer. Fields grow green, pollen fills the air, and red poppies invade the roadside. Italians traditionally change their wardrobe in May, swapping winter clothes for summer attire. Pink polo shirts and dresses are seen out on the streets as the colour of the maglia rosa, and La Gazzetta dello Sport inspire a new seasonal trend and celebrates the race.

Local authorities pay to host stage starts and finishes, and so encourage local businesses to get involved. Quiet piazzas are decorated with pink balloons and bunting. Shop windows are filled with old bikes, jerseys and anything pink. Pizzeria and restaurants create special dishes, and bars try to cash in on the sense of celebration with Giro-flavoured cocktails and gelato.

The simple joys of Italian life are easy to see when the Giro comes to town.

"Legendary Italian journalist Indro Montanelli wrote that 'The Giro has the power to transform every day into a Sunday.' He's right," La Gazzetta's chief cycling correspondent Ciro Scognamiglio tells Cyclingnews.

"The Giro unifies Italy during May, offers a great sporting battle and makes us briefly proud to be Italian. When the Giro comes to town, it's a day of celebration, and millions of people still watch the race go by from the roadside. School is out for the day, and factory workers are given a break to watch the race go by. It's a moment of aggregation and community."

For Giro d'Italia organiser RCS Sport, the Corsa Rosa is also big business.

Like the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia was created to sell newspapers and advertising and is still part of the influential RCS Media Group, which owns La Gazzetta dello Sport, other media titles and Italy's third most important television broadcaster, La7. Urbano Cairo, who learned about the media business as Silvio Berlusconi's personal assistant, has been the majority shareholder and CEO since 2016.

Like ASO and the Amaury family, who own the Tour, RCS Sport taps into national pride and uses political connections to prop up their money-making sports business. RCS Sport generates just a small percentage of RCS Media Group's revenue, but it is a strategic asset, with a turnover of €80 million and around €22 million in profit.

RCS Sport organises Milan-San Remo, Il Lombardia, the UAE Tour and other races, but most of its revenue is made in May thanks to television rights, stage hosts, and sponsors. While the Tour de France revenue is much higher at close to €250 million, RCS Sport has been deft at controlling costs and earning extra revenue since Urbano Cairo took over.

The 2026 Giro d'Italia will start in Bulgaria, a year after the Grande Partenza in Albania. Recent elections in Bulgaria have disrupted the preparations for hosting the Giro, and the teams asked for higher expenses due to another logistically complex start to the race, but RCS Sport has shrugged off any criticism. It's just happy to earn an estimated €10 million for the Grande Partenza and three stages in Bulgaria.

Entwined in Italian history

The Giro is entwined in Italian history, making cycling part of the history of the nation, its culture and its people.

The first edition was held in 1909, just 48 years after key regions were united to create Italy. This year's Giro is the 109th edition, with only the two world wars putting a stop to the race's running.

The history and events of the Giro d'Italia have been coloured and reported by the pink pages of the La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper. Created in 1896, La Gazzetta built on the success of two cycling newspapers and launched just a few days before the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece. In 1908, a rival newspaper was about to create an Italian cycling stage race, and so the Gazzetta owners and editors moved quickly and announced the creation of the Giro d'Italia for May 1909.

They didn't have the funding or an official route, but announced the race would cover 3,000km over eight stages and head as far south as Naples. Luigi Ganna emerged as the first overall winner, calculated on points rather than overall time, despite a series of punctures and misfortunes. He snatched victory on the final day in Milan thanks to a level crossing delaying his rivals and a horse taking out key rival Giovanni Rossignoli.

Over the years, great rivalries fired up the Italian tifosi during the Giro, helping to build the history of the race and sell hundreds of thousands of copies of La Gazzetta.

Costante Girardengo versus Alfredo Binda in the 1920s, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi crossed swords before and especially after World War II. The 1946 Giro was a symbol of the Italian 'rinascita' or return to life, a year after liberation from the Nazis, a year after fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was hung in Milan's Piazza Loreto, near where stage 15 finishes this year.

The Bartali-Coppi duel of those years was one for the ages, with Bartali representing the Catholic conservatives and Coppi the modernisation of the nation. They inspired a cycling boom for a generation, with Felice Gimondi later cheered on as he took on Eddy Merckx in the late sixties. The tifosi again took cultural sides in the daily discussions as Giuseppe Saronni clashed with Francesco Moser in the late seventies and eighties. Saronni was the Lombardy-born big-city sprinter, while Moser was the son of a farmer from the Trentino mountains. Cycling has always represented more than just sport.

Marco Pantani first became the tifosi's hero in 1994, and peak 'Pirata' came in 1998 when Pantani won the Giro and the Tour, as bandanas and pirate flags were seen along every stage. It was the pinnacle of Italian cycling, with Pantani still remembered and evoked with 'rosa' tinted spectacles even today.

The Giro lost its air of innocence in the EPO-fueled 1990s, just like the Tour de France and the rest of the sport. In 1969, Eddy Merckx was sent home but largely forgiven for mysteriously testing positive for a stimulant, but the 1998 Festina Affair was a watershed moment. Pantani was considered a saviour in Paris, but his Icarus-like career arc ended a year later when he was disqualified from the 1999 Giro for a high blood haematocrit. He died of a cocaine overdose in 2004.

Other doping scandals followed as the Giro struggled for credibility. The 2001 race almost ended in San Remo after a mass search of team hotels. Other riders, including Ivan Basso and Danilo Di Luca, were suspended and disgraced before the likes of Alberto Contador, Chris Froome, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Egan Bernal, Primož Roglič and most recently Simon Yates won the maglia rosa.

The Giro director was once as famous as the Pope

La Gazzetta dello Sport officially registered the name 'Giro d'Italia' in 1922 and has made money from the sport ever since.

Highlights of the Giro were broadcast on Italian television as early as 1957, further boosting the fascination and visibility of the race. In 1953, non-sporting brands were allowed to sponsor teams, and Nivea sparked another business revolution in professional cycling when they sponsored Fiorenzo Magni's team. Other Italian industrialists and companies followed, with San Pellegrino, Carpano, Faema, Molteni, Salvarani, Scic, Sanson, Brooklyn, Del Tongo, Carrera, Polti, Mercatone Uno, Mapei, Saeco, Lampre and Fassa Bortolo all becoming long-time sponsors to promote their wares.

Armando Cougnet was the first race director of the Giro d'Italia between 1909 and 1947, with Vincenzo Torriani holding another long reign until 1993. He was followed by Carmine Castellano, briefly by former La Gazzetta journalist Angelo Zomegnan, innovator Michele Acquarone and then Mauro Vegni.

Torriani is remembered as the greatest 'Direttore', the real boss of the race, who struck deals with local mayors and politicians to host stages, with teams, riders and sponsors to make sure the Giro turned a profit. Torriani was famous for furiously waving his arms at riders, the tifosi and anyone who got in the way of the Giro from the sunroof of his race car; a cigarette was often hanging from his mouth, and his anger was expressed by Italian hand gestures.

The riders and teams would get their revenge when their domestiques ransacked a bar for drinks and rode away without paying the bill, shouting "Torriani will pay". Some bar owners even tried to invoice the Giro organisers, but Torriani, smart to the last, never paid up.

"Torriani was Napoleon, and he conquered Italy each May with the Giro d'Italia," respected former La Gazzetta journalist Claudio Gregori wrote on the 20th anniversary of his death.

"The Gazzetta editor Gino Palumbo once wrote that every Italian was able to recognise two people: the Pope and Vincenzo Torriani. It's true, Torriani was an icon of Italy. He knew how to build relationships and balance the books; he was full of ideas and courage, never scared or fearful of the consequences of his actions."

Torriani brimmed with Italian creativity and used the rivalry with the Tour de France to often shake up the Giro and innovate race formats. He is said to have invented the team time trial, mountain time trials, time bonuses and extreme mountain top finishes. During his years in charge, the riders were sent up the Stelvio, Monte Bondone and the Passo di Gavia in the snow. The riders often protested, as they still do today, but Torriani could count on the protection and influence of the editors and owners of La Gazzetta dello Sport.

The 1978 Giro started in Venice, with the opening stage raced on pontoons and finished in Saint Mark's Square. Nine years later, the Giro started in San Remo with one of the early stages, a time trial descent of the Poggio. Other stages finished in central Siena, like Strade Bianche does today, below the Leaning Tower of Pisa, inside the Verona Arena and at the Vatican. Torriani introduced the first 'Grande Partenza' from outside of Italy, and so the 1973 race started in Belgium and passed through seven countries to celebrate the creation of the European Union.

The true value of the Giro d'Italia

RCS Sport has learned that an Italian Grande Partenza generates far less revenue, and so the Giro has started abroad 15 times since the San Marino micro-state hosted the start in 1965. RCS Sport has tested the logistical limits of Grand Tour starts more and more in recent years, with Grande Partenzas as far away as Belgium, Denmark, Amsterdam, Ireland and even Israel in 2018. A Washington DC and New York Grand Depart was once discussed, with even an idea of starting in Japan briefly considered.

The Italian investment bank Ifis produced a report suggesting that the 2023 Giro d’Italia generated direct and indirect revenue of €2 billion. €605 million was said to derive from spectators attending the Corsa Rosa during the three weeks of the race, and a further €1.4 billion, based on the calculation of tourism spending by those who return or travel to Italy within 18 months after seeing the Giro d’Italia. Those calculations are somewhat theoretical, like declaring pizza as an asset against the huge Italian national debt, but they do indicate the intrinsic value of the Giro and its symbolism for the country.

In recent years, RCS Sport has cuddled up to the right-wing politicians currently in power in Italy to secure funding and sponsorship from state-owned agencies. The Italian Foreign Ministry has declared the Giro as an official global sports ambassador, using the race for 'sports diplomacy' and to promote the country. The cyclamen-coloured points jersey is again sponsored by the Italian Trade Agency.

RCS Sport moved the Giro finish from its home city of Milan to Rome in 2023 to earn a reported extra €1.5 million a year, and is always looking to cut costs and increase revenues. Even a fraud and internal financial misappropriation scandal had little effect on RCS Sport. A reported €17 million was said to have been taken from event accounts between 2006 and 2013, but only an internal accountant was found guilty, and little of the funds were ever recovered. Race director Michele Acquarone was sacked by RCS management but was later cleared in court.

RCS Sport flirted with the idea of joining the One Cycling project aimed at shaking up pro cycling's business model, with reports that their races could be sold to investors, perhaps even from the Middle East. However, Urbano Cairo knows how to run a business and knows the political, cultural and economic value of the Giro.

"Sell RCS Sport? No way. I'm not crazy…" he told Cyclingnews a few years ago, ever the salesman.

"I hope the Giro d'Italia can return to being the great race it was back in the 1970s. In every way, especially economically, so that we can invest and make it even bigger and better. It's got to get back to the level of the Tour de France."