History
The first edition was 1905. It was then called Milan-Milan. It gained its current name in 1907. The route has changed many times. Milan, Sesto San Giovanni, Bergamo, Varese, Monza, Como have been start or finish place. In 2004 the race started in Mendrisio in Switzerland, and ended in Como. The most famous obstacle is the Madonna del Ghisallo climb that appears in the latter part of the race. A shrine there has a small museum containing religious and cycling objects.
Fausto Coppi won a record five times. Frenchman Henri Pelissier and Irishman Sean Kelly are the only non-Italian riders to win the race three times. The 2009 and 2010 editions were won by Philippe Gilbert. Gilbert was not able to win the 2011 edition after a successful season for the Belgium classics specialist.
Read more about this topic: Giro Di Lombardia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)