1919 Giro | 1921 Giro | Giro d'Italia Database | 1920 Giro Quick Facts | 1920 Giro d'Italia Final GC | Stage results with running GC | Teams | The Story of the 1920 Giro d'Italia |
2,632 km raced at an average speed of 25.64 km/hr
Sources disagree as to the number of starters, but 49 seems to be the correct count (one writer says it's 42) with only 10 classified finishers.
Stage 1 went into Switzerland for a short distance, marking the first time the Giro left the confines of the Italian state.
At the end of the final stage a horse got onto the course, messing up the sprint and making determining the first nine places impossible.
Bill & Carol McGann's book The Story of the Tour de France, Volume 1, 1903 - 1975 is available as an audiobook here.
1920 Giro d'Italia Complete Final General Classification:
Winning team: Bianchi
Highest placed independent rider: Emilio Petiva
1920 Giro stage results with running GC:
Stage 1: Sunday, May 23, Milano - Torino, 348 km
Ascents: Passo del Monte Ceneri, Passo della Serra
GC after Stage 1: Same as stage results
Stage 2: Tuesday, May 25, Torino - Lucca, 378 km
Ascent: Passo del Bracco
GC after Stage 2:
Stage 3: Thursday, May 27, Lucca - Roma, 386 km
Ascents: Volterra, Radicofani
GC after Stage 3:
Stage 4: Saturday, May 29: Roma - Chieti, 234 km
Ascent: Sella del Corno
GC after Stage 4:
Stage 5: Monday, May 31, Chieti - Macerata, 231 km
Ascent: Cermignano
While Alvoine arrived 1st, he was declassified to third and Torricelli was awarded the stage.
GC after Stage 5:
Stage 6: Wednesday, June 2, Macerata - Bologna, 282 km
GC after Stage 6:
Stage 7: Friday, June 4, Bologna - Trieste, 349 km
GC after Stage 7:
8th and Final Stage: Sunday, June 6, Trieste - Milano, 421 km
The first 9 riders, listed alphabetically here, were awarded the same time and place (ex aequo).
1920 Giro d'Italia Complete Final General CLassification
Bianchi-Pirelli
Legnano-Pirelli
Stucchi-Pirelli
The Story of the 1920 Giro d'Italia
This excerpt is from "The Story of the Giro d'Italia", Volume 1. If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book, either print, eBook or audiobook. The Amazon link here will make either purchase easy.
The 1920 Giro was 2,632 kilometers long with eight stages that took the race only as far south as Rome. The 329-kilometer average stage length was tough, but a lot shorter than the 1920 Tour’s 367-kilometer average. The roads were still in terrible condition and after the difficult time the race had in southern Italy in 1919, it wasn’t surprising to see the race stay in central and northern Italy.
The departing field wasn’t large, only 49 riders. Of course Girardengo was the favorite while Calzolari, Santhià, Galetti, Buysse, Gerbi, Bordin, Belloni and Rossignoli were also part of the peloton. Also at the start line was Jean Alavoine, a French racer who by 1920 had racked up a second place, two thirds and a fifth in the Tour. He would go on to take another second place in the 1922 edition.
Gaetano “Tano” Belloni, second in 1919, was getting the reputation of habitually letting the big ones just slip away. Italians call him the first eterno secondo.
While the racers making up the 1920 Giro peloton were small in number, as the saying goes, they were crucial in character.
Stage one set another precedent for the Giro when it ventured outside Italy for a few kilometers, going through a corner of Switzerland on the way from Milan to Turin. The riders went over Monte Ceneri where Girardengo crashed badly. He repaired his bike in the pouring rain without help, as the regulations of the moment required.
Seizing the moment, Belloni’s Bianchi team attacked, leaving Girardengo almost twelve minutes behind. The ruthless move served Belloni well: he finished right behind stage winner Giuseppe Oliveri and Angelo Gremo.
Two days later, the 378-kilometer stage from Turin to Lucca was Girardengo’s final undoing. Still suffering from his stage one crash, he was clearly in difficulty. Surprisingly, when the race came to the climb that led to Creta, south of Pavia, he had no trouble ascending at race speed. But once on the descent he was in agony, and the bad roads on the flats made riding at high speed intolerably painful for the campionissimo.
At Molassana, in the hills north of Genoa, he could take it no more and abandoned the race. Fans standing at the roadside watching Gira’s misery took him to a nearby home and finding the place empty, broke in and carried the racer to a bed. When the cottage’s owner returned he was astonished to find his house filled with race fans along with a strange man lying in his bed. The surprised homeowner was mollified (he could probably do nothing anyway) upon learning the reason for the furor in his house.
Girardengo later made a point of explaining to the papers the circumstances of his retirement from the race, refuting an accusation that he had quit in a dispute over an illegal wheel change. He said his physical troubles were obvious for all to see.
Back in the race, Gerbi was caught getting a tow from a motorcycle sidecar and was disqualified. His angry fans demanded that he be reinstated, which was done, sub judice (pending further review).
Race leader Oliveri ruptured a tendon climbing on the Ligurian coast near Recco and abandoned. Sivocci and Galetti bailed out as well. Belloni won the stage against a peloton that was already down to just 26 riders.
The General Classification after all the stage two drama:
1. Gaetano Belloni
2. Angelo Gremo @ 5 seconds
3. Giovanni Brunero @ 11 minutes 42 seconds
4. Paride Ferrari @ 47 minutes 57 seconds
Belloni won the next stage into Rome with Gremo right on his wheel, Brunero a few seconds behind, and Leopoldo Torricelli about a minute back. The rest of the field was ten minutes or more back. This was turning into a two-man race.
Finally Alavoine woke up and animated the next three stages. The small number of police on hand at the stage start in Rome couldn’t control the unruly crowd which disrupted the first of the three; Corriere della Sera called the rowdy fans “Bolsheviks”. The angry tifosi had demanded the full disqualification of Gerbi over his earlier infraction of the rules. Gerbi was so delayed by this commotion that when he arrived at the finish in Chieti, he announced his retirement from the race.
Belloni wins a stage (I don't know which one).
The judges found much to dislike in the second of Alavoine’s victories and the Frenchman was relegated to third. In that fifth stage to Macerata, Belloni lost both fourteen minutes and his race lead. Gremo was the new leader and the peloton was down to just ten riders.
Alavoine won his third stage, the Giro’s sixth, ending in Bologna. Belloni and Buysse finished with the same time while Gremo lost only three seconds.
The General Classification now stood this way:
1. Angelo Gremo
2. Gaetano Belloni @ 9 minutes 58 seconds
3. Jean Alavoine @ 45 minutes 31 seconds
It was the seventh stage where Belloni made the 1920 Giro his own. He won while several of his competitors suffered catastrophic time losses. Gremo gave up 42 minutes, Alavoine lost almost half an hour and Buysse finished nearly two hours after Belloni.
Gaetano Belloni wins stage 7 in Trieste
The last stage demonstrated how close to chaos the racing in those days could be. The first nine finishers came in together after 16 hours 4 minutes 42 seconds of racing and were all ranked first among equals and listed alphabetically because a horse got on the course and foiled the sprint. Domenico Schierano, who was unfortunate enough to come in 29 seconds after the first nine, was officially listed as tenth.
Just those ten made it to Milan. Belloni’s winning average speed was 25.64 kilometers per hour. He wasn’t the eternal second anymore.
Gaetano Belloni
Final 1920 Giro d’Italia General Classification:
1. Gaetano Belloni (Bianchi) 102 hours 47 minutes 33 seconds
2. Angelo Gremo (Bianchi) @ 32 minutes 24 seconds
3. Jean Alavoine (Bianchi) @ 1 hour 1 minute 14 seconds
4. Emilio Petiva (independent) @ 3 hours 2 minutes 44 seconds
5. Domenico Schierano (independent) @ 3 hours 36 minutes 20 seconds
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