Giro-E Enel 2024 – Stage 10 Benevento – Cusano Mutri

Cusano Mutri, 14 May 2024 – It is serious business today at the Giro-E. From Benevento to Bocca della Selva, 81.5 kilometres and 2,600 metres elevation. It is the hardest stage of the 2024 edition, with a significant positive altitude range, which without e-bikes would only be accessible to very well-trained cyclists. The final climb between Cusano Mutri and Bocca della Selva is a small Stelvio: 18 kilometres at an average gradient of 5.6%, with peaks of 10%; not impossible but long, with the trees thinning out as you go and the final kilometres that never end, a great test both for the cyclists’ spirit and for the bicycle batteries. While the almost lunar territory of the arrival may clear (or crowd?) the cyclists’ minds of thoughts, the city of departure, Benevento, deserves attention. In fact, cyclists will pass from the splendid Arch of Trajan, symbol of the city, to the arrival arch of the stage. Also worth seeing is the church of Santa Sofia, in the square of the same name, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011. Known as the city of witches (locally called janare), Benevento is also the city of Strega, the liqueur, to which there is even a museum dedicated.

The Benevento-Cusano Mutri stage (Bocca della Selva)

Benevento has been the arrival point of the Giro d’Italia 8 times (the first in 1925, the last in 2016), while it has only been the starting point once (in 2015): today it is the turn of the Giro-E. Unprecedented, however, is the arrival at Bocca della Selva di Cusano Mutri, a climb tackled as a GPM last time at the 2021 Giro during the Foggia-Guardia Sanframondi, but from the opposite side.

After an off-course stretch of just over 16 kilometres, the Giro-E joins the Giro d’Italia route

for the next 65 kilometres. The altitude profile includes the climb to Camposauro and many ups and downs to the foot of the final ascent, the one that leads to Bocca della Selva from the Cusano Mutri side. A real climb for real cyclists, albeit “electric” ones!

Cyclist of the day – Simone Venier

He doesn’t exactly have the stature of a jockey (1.96 m by 100 kilos), or rather, of a grimpeur, as his French cousins with the usual lexical refinement call climbers. Simone Venier is a tank who would not look out of place as a halberdier in the Swiss Guard: in fact his sport was rowing, not cycling.

On the Olympic boats he was a silver medallist at the Beijing Games in the four sculls, and at the 2010 Cambridge World Championships he came second, in the same specialty. But wearing the uniform of his Fiamme Gialle police force team he too took up the challenge and pedalled in the Giro-E Enel 2024.

“With racing bikes I have done various retreats with the national rowing team, so let’s say that I have learned about cycling. I’m certainly no expert, but I fend for myself, and the important thing at the Giro-E is to be together, have fun, team up and introduce young people to sport; the latter being something for which the Fiamme Gialle and the Guardia di Finanza have always been there. The pride of taking part in this event with the colours of the Fiamme Gialle is enormous for me, because this year I will not be competing in the Olympics. It gives me great satisfaction to represent, in the year of its 250th anniversary, the Guardia di Finanza, which for me is a family in which I was born and raised, and still identify with today”.

City of Sport and Health, an opportunity for young people: in Casalbordino and Senigallia the next ANCI workshops at the Giro d’Italia.

In the second week of the Giro-E, the ANCI workshops continue in the municipalities hosting the stage starts, as part of the broader support and financing program for Italian municipalities under the National Youth Policy Fund.

The next appointment in the hospitality area of the Green Fun Village is in Casalbordino on Wednesday 15 May at 1.30 pm about Abruzzo and the topic of the enhancing the intangible heritage for local development, followed by the representation of different local experiences.

This is followed in Senigallia on Thursday 16 May, at 1.00 pm, with work that will focus on opportunities for economic and social growth for young people through the valorisation of resources, sports and major events.

Through the experiences and projects “with and for” young people told by public and private operators active in the sector of youth policies, the objective is once again the strengthening of the Network between public and private, in the context of the work of the ANCI Next Community Gen to implement investments with an increasing impact on the young people who receive them.

The contributions to the table were significant: the Alfredo Panzini Secondary School, the Panathlon Club of Senigallia, the Wanda Di Ferdinando Foundation and WAYouth; and also MOST, the funded National Centre for Sustainable Mobility established at MIT, as part of EU Next Generation measures.

Thanks to the collaboration with ANCI Marche, the meeting also sees the involvement of the Polytechnic University of Marche.

From Casalbordino and Senigallia the Giro-E starts resumes again with the ANCI team, captained by Giorgio Rocca, a former skier, and leading a group of local administrators and ambassadors.

For info and registration click here: link