After three weeks and 3338km of racing, the Giro d'Italia riders and race caravan face a final transfer of 600km from Piancavallo to Rome for Sunday's 21st and final stage.
Jonas Vingegaard and his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates celebrated at the Piancavallo finish, knowing the 131km flat stage around Rome is a little more than a parade stage, surely destined to end in a sprint.
Barring any final problems, Vingegaard will finally be crowned as the 'Re Pescatore' and winner of the 2026 Giro on Sunday evening in central Rome with a view of the Fori Imperiali Roman ruins and the Colosseum.
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Before the riders celebrate in Rome, they have to get to the Eternal City, some 600km south of the Piancavallo mountain finish, above the Vento plains.
Race organiser RCS Sport have arranged the transfer for the riders, as they did for the travel from Bulgaria to Calabria after the Grande Partenza and the opening three stages.
After the mountain finish, the riders were allowed to shower in a nearby hotel and, along with a limited number of team carers and directeurs sportif, were transported by coach to Venice airport, 100km south of Pincavallo.
Teams prepared a recovery takeaway meal for the coach journey to Venice airport. Three planes were scheduled to take off at 15-minute intervals from 9:15pm, with a flight time of 1:10 to Rome.
Team buses took the riders to the start in Gemona del Friuli, close to the border with Slovenia and then faced their own transfer and race to complete the 650km drive and arrive at the Rome airport in time to collect the riders and take them to their hotels on the western outskirts of the capital.
All other team staff, race personnel and media have to travel independently to Rome depending on their schedules.
Cyclingnews has chosen to drive to Venice and then travel to Rome by high-speed train on Sunday morning. Others have opted to drive the 600km, dividing the journey with a night in a hotel near Bologna or Florence.
Rome has hosted the final stage of the Giro since 2023 after race organiser RCS Sport fell out with their home city of Milan and struck a deal with the Rome city council to promote the Italian capital with the so-called 'Grande Arrivo.'
With the third week of the Giro traditionally held in the mountains of northern Italy, the Rome finish always means a long transfer south.
Cycling is seen as an environmentally friendly form of transport, but professional cycling involves long transfers for and during races, creating significant pollution and environmental footprint.
Each team at the Giro has a bus, numerous team vehicles and other vehicles. Race organisers also have a significant staff of several hundred and dozens of vehicles on the race, as does the publicity caravan and fan village. Television crews and 40 or so journalists, including two from Cyclingnews, also travel by car, covering each stage.
Climate protesters have stopped the Tour de France in recent years, and there is a growing debate about the footprint of professional cycling and what can and should be done about it.
When the Giro finished in Rome in 2023, the then race director Mauri Vegni justified the long transfer.
"I don't think one charter flight from the north of Italy to Rome is any worse than the thousands of scheduled flights that are taken every day. What's the solution? Stop flying? I think that's a sterile polemic," Vegni told Cyclingnews.
"There are lots of ways to respect and help the environment, it's not only about one flight less or one flight more. We need to look at the whole footprint of the sport, sit down together and decide what we can do about it."
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