In 1905 Giovanni Gerbi became the first winner of Il Lombardia thanks to some careful planning and strong legs
Words GILES BELBIN Photography GETTY
In October 1952 Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport published its 32-page guide to the 46th edition of Il Lombardia, or the Giro di Lombardia as it was known at the time. In among the stories of Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali and 1951 winner Louison Bobet was a single-page retrospective and interview with the winner of the first edition of the race, Giovanni Gerbi, under the headline ‘1905: the Devil on the Rails’.
Gerbi would have been 67 years old when the writer of the story, Ulisse Corno, came calling to talk about the day he entered the books as the first winner of Il Lombardia. ‘How did I win?’ Gerbi asks rhetorically in the article. ‘I won it [as I] won other races using my best quality: I was a great finisseur. Once I gained two or three hundred metres, it was done: nobody was able to catch me.’ But exactly how did Gerbi gain those first metres? ‘Some tricks, we suggest,’ writes Corno, knowing the legend of the race. At this suggestion, ‘Gerbi’s face becomes dark’.
‘What exactly happened I don’t know’
It was around 4pm on Sunday 12th November 1905 that Gerbi sprinted into Milan alone to win the first edition of what is today the final Monument of the season. It had been more than nine hours since he had set off in the company of 53 other riders from the city in cold and wet conditions. From Milan the race headed to checkpoints at Crema, Bergamo and Lecco before returning to Milan for the finish.
As he rode out of Milan under heavy skies, Gerbi – who would forge a reputation as a rider who prepared for races by scouting routes for strategic places to attack – knew exactly where he was going to make his move: Crema, just 30km or so into the race, where he knew tramlines crossed the race route.
Race director Eugenio Costamagna would later write, ‘On the Crema road, at a certain point on a curve, the riders met a wagon. What exactly happened I don’t know, but the result probably of someone’s false manoeuvre was almost everybody falling… I clearly saw bicycles being pulled out from under the cart, a rider climbing up the escarpment of the ditch where he had tumbled, [meanwhile] Gerbi and [Giovanni] Cun
