Pezcyclingnews: Giro Roadside: Finestre!



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Jan 3, 2005
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PEZ Roadside St.20: Giro’15 St.20: There’s only one place to watch this penultimate stage of the 2015 Giro d’Italia – and that’s on the spiralling slopes of the Colle della Finestre. Ed & Martin battled closed roads and the long way ’round, but made it to the top of one of cycling’s most epic climbs. We like the quotes from Gazzetta journalist, Marco Pastonesi in Daniel Friebe and Pete Goding’s book, “Mountain High.”‘An intestine of vertical asphalt’ and ‘alcoholic gradients’ – he speaks of course of the Colle delle Finestre.A total length of 18.5 kilometres is further qualified by the fact that the top 7.8 of those hard K’s are on ‘sterrato’ – dirt road.The average gradient is 9.2% for the whole ascent with maxima of 14% on the asphalt and 11% on the dirt.There are 45 hairpins, 32 on the tar, 13 on the dirt.It’s also the ‘Cima Coppi,’ the highest point this Giro will reach at 2,178 metres.The passo was hacked out of the mountain side in the year of our Lord, 1700 to serve the Forte Fenestrelle; ‘Finestre’ is Italian for window and with it’s huge height it indeed provides a ‘window on the world.’It’s nickname is the, ‘The Mountain of the Indians’ – Friebe’s book imagines from ‘Aztecs keeping guard over their mountain’ or perhaps North American Indians lining a canyon rim which John Wayne has strayed into ?Gears for the day: 34 or 36 x 28/30/32.The first man to breast the Colle was the inspiring...

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