La Gazzetta dello Sport

The Giro d'Italia was created following the example of the Tour de France. While the Tour de France's goal was to boost the sales of the L'Auto newspaper (which has since become L'Equipe), the Giro d'Italia had the same goal but for the sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. 1909 issue:

Today, La Gazzetta dello Sport has reached record readership levels, with close to four million readers per day. The sports daily has been the most popular paper in Italy for some time, with a strong focus on soccer (football). Gazzetta's total of 3,995,000 readers is followed by daily newspapers La Repubblica with 3,209,000 readers and Corriere della Sera with 2,870,000. La Repubblica has the most read website, however, with 1,104,000 Italian readers. Corriere's website has 801,000 visitors and La Gazzetta's 637,000

For the holidays La Gazzetta dello Sport has opened a temporary story in Milan where you can buy Gazzetta memorabilia and, as they say in Italy, "gadgets".


ICJ Reader contribution contest will run 1 January to 15 February, 2011. Details here.

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,600 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog. There is also an Italian weather widget along the right side and a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page. What I'm riding.

Gazzetta dello Sport Top 10 Greatest Cyclists Poll

The Gazzetta dello Sport has had a poll in progress for a few days now asking readers to vote on who was/is the greatest cyclist. In asking the question the Gazzetta recognized, to their credit, the difficulty of the task. Their own conclusion, and only listing the top 10, is:
1. Eddy Merckx
2. Fausto Coppi
3. Bernard Hinault
4. Jacques Anquetil
5. Alfredo Binda
6. Gino Bartali
7. Rick Van Steenbergen
8. Lance Armstrong
9. Miguel Indurain
10.Felice Gimondi

Readers, casting 6,500 votes for 17 riders, voted differently:

1.Coppi 61.0% of votes
2.Merckx 39.0%
3.Pantani 23.1%
4.Bartali 19.5%
5.Armstrong 15.1%
6.Indurain 12.2%
7.Hinault 11.2%
8.Binda 5.6%
9.Gimondi 4.3%
10.Anquetil 4.2%
11.Girardengo 2.1%
12.Cipollini 1.1%
13.Van Steenbergen 0.4%
14.Magni 0.4%
15.Van Looy 0.3%
16.Bobet 0.3%
17.Kelly 0.2%

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondo, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are very welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,200 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page.

This Morning's Gazzetta dello Sport

The front page of the Gazzetta dello Sport sportspaper, sponsor of the Giro d'Italia.

After the Giro we'll get back to "regular programming": everything from A to Z about Italian cycling. Stories, including cycling trip stories, for the Italian Cycling Journal welcome; contact veronaman@gmail.com