STRADE BIANCHE 2025
Women's race: 8 March 2025
Men's race 8 March 2025
Strade Bianche is one biggest success strories of the recent times in the world of road cycling races. Developed from a typical Italian grand fondo,the first race for professional riders were held in 2007. The first winner of the race was Alexander Kolobnev.
Fabian Cancellara with his three victories (2008, 2012, 2016) and some other memorable moments by him (f. e. when he was overconfident and Zdenek Stybar defeated him) contributed to the increasing attention toward this event.
Strade Bianche, situated in Tuscany, has its natural gift, of course, the beatytiful landscape. For my personal taste it's a bit of a clichè, (almost so much overused like the Eiffel tower in Paris-related stuff, oh, just terrible), but for many-many people those hills around Siena (and partially around Florence), a sole building or a three on the top of the hill, the white roads framed with the line iof cypress threes mean Italy. No wonder, that a certain type of romantic stories (middle-aged American woman starts a new life after divorce and finds finally real love in Tuscany) are set in this part of the world.1 Long story short, people enjoy the vibes the landscape provides.
THE GREATEST CYCLING LEGENDS AND STRADE BIANCHE
My main point arguing against calling Strade Bianche the 6th Monument that unlike the original five Monuments, it has only a very short history.
The Monuments are more than a century old, and some attributes of them (f.e. their long distance) are the "monuments" what was a road cycling race like during the early years.
- On the other hand, these types of novels accelerating the process of Tuscany getting more and more a big clichè. [↩]