Cyclist
Pro race history: Alfonsina Strada rides the men’s Giro d’Italia in 1924
In the early hours of Saturday 10th May 1924, 90 riders assembled at the Porta Ticinese in Milan for the start of the 12th Giro d’Italia. Ahead lay 300km to Genoa, the first of 12 stages that would ultimately lead back to Milan after 3,613km of racing. The race was being filmed for broadcast in cinemas and as the apprehensive riders waited for the call to start, the camera settled on one in particular.
Some 80 years later, author Paolo Facchinetti would describe the scene as that rider smoothed their short hair over their forehead.
‘In a face contorted by tension, two determined eyes stood out above all else,’ Facchinetti writes. Those eyes belonged to the rider who was about to become the first woman to ride the Giro: Alfonsina Strada, number 72.
That opening stage, taking in the 1,149m Passo Penice, was a suitable introduction to a route notable for both its severity and its length, being more than 400km longer than the 1923 edition. In his book Gli Anni Ruggenti di Alfonsina Strada, Facchinetti describes riders having to ‘face uncomfortable descents and eat the dust of difficult roads’ on the road to Genoa. Some 40 minutes would separate the top 20.
Strada arrived in Genoa nearly two and a half hours after stage winner Bartolomeo Aymo, placing her 74th of the 77 finishers. She had suffered her share of misfortune – mechanical issues forcing her to stop to carry out repairs. She was far from alone in that, but she was the only one who had to endure sarcastic calls from riders laughing goodbye as they passed her, certain it would be the last they saw of her. Little did they know. Thirteen of those laughing boys quit on the road to Genoa while Strada kept going.
The stage report in the following day’s La Gazzetta dello Sport included a description of Strada pedalling with ‘ease and cheerfulness, just like a little girl who has skipped school’.
‘This is what Alfonsina had to experience,’ Facchinetti writes, stating for the record that she had of course ‘put in an extraordinary effort, endured strains she had never imagined and arrived sweaty and dirty’.
Born Alfonsina Moreni in 1891 in Castelfranco Emilia, northwest of Bologna, Strada discovered cycling early, blazing around the town on a bike her father had brought home. This was 1900s rural Italy – a time when to see a female on a bicycle could scandalise the neighbours. Alfonsina didn’t care. She rode on, telling her parents she was off to church but instead racing locally. She would eventually move to Milan, having met the man she would later marry – Luigi Strada – to develop her cycling.
Alfonsina and the bike
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After setting an unofficial women’s hour record of 37.192km in 1911, Strada secured contracts to race in the velodromes of Paris and rode the Tour of Lombardy in 1917 and 1918. When Luigi was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the early 1920s, Alfonsina returned to the family home.
In 1924 the Gazzetta was embroiled in a battle with teams and riders demanding appearance money to ride the Giro. The result was that many of cycling’s biggest names wouldn’t race, giving the newspaper a problem – how to ensure their race still captured the imagination? Strada had previously requested a start but had always been turned away. Now she was cautiously welcomed by an organiser who sensed the possibility of a story.
At first little mention was made of Strada riding. Her name wasn’t included on the list of starters until three days before, and then it was printed as ‘Alfonsin Strada di Milano’. That missing ‘a’ may have been a printing error or it may have been deliberate – the organisers wanting to tread softly at the start to avoid any negative reaction before the race had even started.
Everything changed after Stage 2, 308km from Genoa to Florence. This time Strada finished 56th of the 65 finishers and was attracting interest along the roadside. At the official rest day reception in Florence she was applauded and presented with flowers. The Gazzetta reported that ‘in just two stages the popularity of this small woman has become greater than that of all the absent champions combined’.
Stage 8 was a 296km haul over two passes in heavy rain and strong winds. Strada’s handlebars snapped and had to be repaired using a broom handle.
‘She was destroyed,’ writes Facchinetti. ‘Her face was streaked… we don’t know if with tears or rain.’ Strada had missed the time cut.
The race organisers had already allowed two riders who had finished outside the time limit to continue but no longer be officially classified. Now organisers gave Strada the same chance. Indeed, they offered financial inducements to encourage her. And so it was that Alfonsina Strada would ride into Milan four stages later alongside the 30 classified finishers.
She had suffered terribly – the ninth stage alone took her 21 hours. People waited for her and carried her from the bike, bruised and broken; meanwhile she spoke of people openly mocking her and laughing as she struggled.
Federico Gay won the race but Strada was undeniably its star. Emilio Colombo wrote, ‘Strada has proven to have no equals in the history of road cycling.’ Not that this stopped the organisers refusing her application to ride in 1925, the race having no need for her as it welcomed back its stars.
After the death of her first husband in 1942, Strada married again and took to running the bicycle shop they owned – pictured here – continuing alone when he too passed away in 1957. Two years later she died of a heart attack aged 68.
Happily, Alfonsina Strada’s story is now increasingly well known. Plays and books have been written, and in 2010 the band Têtes de Bois released the song ‘Alfonsina e la bici’.
‘We wrote about Alfonsina because her story is unbelievable, in a period when women were invisible for no reason,’ a spokesperson for the band said. ‘We went to find the bike shop she’d opened and found an old milkman who knew her. He showed us her place, which is now a phone shop. It seemed sad and poetic so we wrote the song.’
This year the Giro d’Italia Women will celebrate the centenary of her Giro ride by launching the Cima Alfonsina Strada. On 13th July, marking the highest point of the race, it will be awarded at the summit of Blockhaus in the Apennines.
• This article originally appeared in issue 152 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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