Alfonsina Strada

They don’t do bike races like they used to.

Take the Giro d’Italia, one of the world’s longest and most prestigious stage races. Today, the race covers some twenty-one hundred miles in twenty-one stages. The riders flash by in a brightly colored pack, with helicopters overhead and a long line of cars behind, each full of gesticulating directeurs, guys handing up bottles and food, and mechanics at the ready with fresh wheels and spare bikes.

But in 1924, the Giro covered 2,245 miles in just twelve tooth-rattling stages on unpaved roads and bikes weighing well over forty pounds. Racers carried spare tires across their shoulders and changed their own flats. Switching gears — most bikes of the day had two — required dismounting and removing the wheel. This was a problem, as eight of the twelve stages crossed high mountain passes.

All this was just how the organizers liked it. They knew cycling’s appeal was built on a kind of sympathetic voyeurism, and that behind the