Giro d’Italia

On Sunday we were lucky enough to be in Rome for the last day of the Giro d’Italia. It was a 15km loop around Rome, starting and finishing at the Colosseum. Having not been to an event like this before I had no idea what to expect.

The first thing that struck me was how much the Europeans are into this sport. I always knew they were avid fans, I just didn’t realise that they dress up in their finest lycra’s and bring their bikes along to watch the race. That’s settled my question of what to wear to the first day of the Tour de France though! Best book Piaf in for a bath the day before as well.

It was an absolutely amazing event. We wondered around the track watching the riders pass by, and then headed up to the start line to watch them take off. About a km away was the finish line so we headed towards there but became very distracted by team buses parked up a side street, as were half of Rome.

The teams were all warming up outside their buses and where protected from the public by a roped off section, which meant the warm ups were more appealing than the actual race, particularly as the riders had no security to get from the track to the bus and ran a gauntlet of people every time they moved outside their roped off area. People swarmed around buses and in the middle of the street trying to catch a glimpse of their favourite rider. We swarmed around the Cervelo bus hoping to see Simon Gerrans. The rest of Rome swarmed around the same bus hoping to get a glimpse of Carlos Sastre, the winner of last years Tour de France. They weren’t disappointed. He gave a couple of interviews, signed some merchandise and chatted with the crowd. I turned into “one of those” and shoved my camera in his face as well.


We figured if we can get this close to Sastre we should try for Armstrong so we headed up to the Astana team bus and loitered around that. Apart from a lot of screaming fans there was no sight of him and after 20 minutes we gave up and walked back down the street. As we jostled our way through the crowd, some riders were jostling their way in the other direction, and just like that Lance Armstrong rode by us. He was so close we could have stuck a spokey doke on his wheel. Damian became starstruck and gave him a big cheesy “G’Day” as he rode by. My paparazzi instincts flew into overdrive and I ran up that hill trying to get a picture of him.


After that we wandered around some more and checked out the finish line. We also found a spot near the start where barricades were missing and we blocked the path of the riders trying to get a good photo of them as they tried not to run over us.

I never picked myself as a massive cycling fan, especially not one that could write six paragraphs about a race, but as it turns out, I think I am. Thank goodness for that because I’m not sure if you’re aware of this but I’m actually riding the Tour de France in a matter of days.