Preview: Giornata Rosa del Ciclismo Femminile – with live video

September 12th

The Giornata Rosa at Nove in the north west of the Veneto (start at Venice and head roughly north west until you hit the foot of the mountains) is the 4th edition of this festival, a whole day devoted to women’s races organised by local club Cicloclub Breganze ‘96. At 9:00 the esordiente take to the start, followed at 10:15 by the allievi, the juniors at 12:00 and finally the elite/pros at 14:15 (I am keeping the Italian class divisions because I’m not sure of the age limits in each one, and I can’t think of any meaningful way of translating them. They are in age order, and the respective junior race distances are 30km, 47km and 67km). The elite race 123km in total, made up of 7 laps of an 8km city circuit followed by three loops out of town towards Marostica to climb the Rosina (although probably not like that). I’ve not seen a start list yet, just names here and there, some of whom are also down on the Chrono Champenois startlist:

Team Htc Columbia (Cantele)
Team Valdarno Umbria (Guderzo, Baccaille)
Gauss Rdz Ormu (Bronzini, Pucinskaite, Martissova)
Safi Pasta Zara Manhattan (Leleivyte, Patuzzo, Cilvinaite)
Fenixs Petrogradets (Boyarskaya, Vilajosana)
Sc Michela Fanini Record Rox (Treier, Pitel, Ovcharenko)
Top Girls Fassa Bortolo Ghezzi (Berlato, Carretta, Tagliaferro)
Chirio Forno d’Asolo (Tamanini, Fernandes, Olynik)
Vaiano Tepso Solaristech (Sosna, Tognali, Frapporti)
Sc Vecchia Fontana (Callovi, Gobbo, Balzan)

Noemi Cantele is the defending champion (and 2008 winner Diana Ziliute will probably be there too in the Safi team car). If you can read Italian (or can understand the Google translated version) there are a few more details here. There is also the promise of live streaming of the event by local station Tva Vicenza both directly and through the local newspaper La Domenica di Vicenza.

And one further sad footnote. The Giro del Valdarno appeared in earlier editions of the Italian domestic calendar scheduled for today, 11th September, but sadly it seems to have been cancelled at some point during the year.