Alfonsina Strada Rides into the Giro d’Italia

In the spring of 1924, Italian cyclist Alfonsina Strada entered the Giro d'Italia under circumstances shaped by a bitter dispute between the race's chief organiser and Italy's leading male cyclists. Emilio Colombo, director of the sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport, found himself facing a collective boycott from the top professional competitors of the era. Rather than surrender to their terms, Colombo mirrored a strategy previously seen in the Tour de France, throwing the contest open to any individual willing to take to the road. The publication agreed to supply lodging and rations, advertising provisions that included thousands of bananas and hundreds of kilograms of meat, but barred support infrastructure such as team managers, mechanics, and accompanying vehicles.

Among the entrants who applied to fill the depleted field was Strada, registered ambiguously on the official roster as Strada, Alfonsin. The omitted vowel obscured her identity, and race authorities assigned her rider number 72 under the assumption that she was a man. Sportswriters had already begun printing reports mentioning Alfonsino before her true gender became obvious on the eve of the grand depart. Although the revelation arrived too late for officials to bar her from the opening leg, the press seized upon the spectacle, labeling her the Devil in a dress as she prepared to contest one of road cycling's most demanding stage endurance tests.