Last summer, the beginning of the Tour of France from Italy was an extraordinary celebration. The same happened in 1998when The Giro d’Italia departed from Francespecifically from A serieswith a 7 km prologue that gave the favorite Alex Zülle the first Maglia Rosa. The city of the Costa Azul also hosted the beginning of Stage 1, which led the runners back to Italy, with arrival in Cneo.
The 1998 edition was special because the D’Italia turn was transmitted again by the RAI After 5 years of exclusive issuance, and in a way revolutionary, of Mediaset, through Italy 1 and withholding 4. in an agreement between institutions of the provinces of Nice, Cneo and Imperia, the turn accepted the invitation of them to start the race with a prologue in the famous ”Paseo de los English“ (Promenade des Anglais) of the capital of the French Riviera. After a splendid evening in the acropolis as a start of the previous acts of the race, the teams celebrated their presentation at the Apollon Auditorium, a show in which artists of the municipal casino were involved.
This exit was also an opportunity to pay tribute to one of the great pioneers of Italian cycling, Alfredo Bindathe tenth of fourteen children of a small builder, who moved to Nice immediately after the great war, with his older brother Piero, to work as a plaster of a maternal uncle. It was in Niza where Alfredo began his cycling activity, immediately demonstrating that he had extraordinary talent. He remained in France until 1924, when he had already won 30 races, before returning to Italy. Its history with the turn is made up of 5 final victories and 41 stage triumphs, consolidated its name as one of the greatest in the history of the race. The French nicknamed him “Mona Lisa”, for its elegance in the bicycle armchair.
1998 is a year that joined Italy and France also for another reason: the historic double-tour of Marco Pantani. In that counterreloj de Niza there was talk of the pirate as one of the runners to continue facing the final rose Maglia, but it could never have expected that Pantani’s myth, an absolute icon for Italian fans even today, was going to solidify definitively there.
