Hindley came close in 2020, when beaten by 39 seconds. The only other Australian to stand on the podium at the end of the grand tour was Cadel Evans who finished third to Vincenzo Nibali in 2013. Six other Australians have finished in the top ten.
An Australian victory in the Giro has been 70 years in the making.
In 1914, two intrepid Victorians, Don Kirkham and Snowy Munro, were part of an Australian team that ventured to Europe. They became the first non-Europeans to contest the Tour de France after impressive performances earlier in the season, including the Milan-San Remo where Kirkham finished an outstanding ninth to Ugo Agostini.
Fourteen years later, three Australians, Ernie Bainbridge, Percy Osborne and Hubert Opperman, and a New Zealander, Harry Watson, sailed to France to compete.
Opperman became a national hero in France, winning the famous 24-hour Bol d’Or, covering an amazing 909 kilometres, before riding on to claim the world 1,000-kilometre record to boot! Oppy returned to France in 1931, racing there and in Switzerland, before finishing 12th in the Tour and winning the 1,200 km Paris-Brest-Paris.
In the early 1950s, encouraged by Opperman - who had retired from racing and had been elected to the Australian Parliament, later serving as the Minister for Immigration – the Melbourne Sporting Globe helped fund another group of Australians to Europe. They would become the first Australians to ride the Giro d’Italia.
The newspaper proclaimed in January 1952: ‘The Sporting Globe-sponsored International Jubilee Cycling Trust has selected John Beasley, Peter Anthony, Eddie Smith and Don Williams as Australia’s team to contest European road cycling classics, including the Tour of Italy and the Tour de France.’
Gino Bambagiotti, an Italian six-day cyclist who had travelled to Australia to race in Sydney prior to the war, managed the team.
Beasley, the youngest at 21, was the reigning Australian road champion. He had a good start to the European visit, finishing 55th in the world’s oldest one-day classic, Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Two weeks later, the Australians joined some of the greatest cyclists of the era for the 1952 Giro d’Italia. Alongside them were the stars of the sport including Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali and Fiorenzo Magni. It was a crack field, which Coppi would conquer before going on to win the Tour de France.
Riders at the 1952 Giro d’Italia, including the Australian, John Beasley (looking down in sunglasses on the right). (Photo supplied)
The Australians joined the Nilux team for the Giro. It was a tough introduction to a Grand Tour, the first time that the young Aussies had experienced a three-week event with the world’s best. Beasley was in the best form, but the others were struggling after the first week. Having agreed to an all or none pact, the quartet abandoned after the eighth stage to Ancona.
Beasley returned to Australia to finish fourth in the inaugural Sun Tour. Now the Herald Sun Tour, the race reflected the growing interest in cycling in the early 1950s and the work of many supporters, including Nino Borsari, the 1932 Olympic Pursuit Team gold medallist at the LA Olympics. Borsari had ridden in the 1934 Centenary Tour of Victoria before returning in 1940 and eventually settling in Melbourne, founding a famous bike shop in Carlton.
Beasley returned to Italy in 1955, where he joined Arthurs Julius, Russell Mockridge and Jim Taylor for the World Championships at Frascati. Mockridge finished 14th in the five-stage Rome-Naples-Rome tour.
It would be another two decades before an Australian finished the Giro d’Italia. An 18-year-old Australian amateur cyclist, Garry Clively, journeyed to Italy in 1975 with the dream of riding for a local team.
Clively was fourth in the World Amateur Road Race Championship in Belgium, and claimed a series of podium finishes in Italy to become the country’s leading amateur cyclist. Clively contested the 1976 Giro, a race that included two of the greatest riders of the era, Francesco Moser and Eddy Merckx. He finished 44th in the tour won by Felice Gimondi. Clively’s best result was in 1977, when still a 21-year-old, he finished 7th in the Vuelta e España, just seven minutes down on the great Flandrian winner, Freddy Maertens.
Garry Clively, the first Australian to finish the Giro d’Italia. (Photo supplied)
Michael Wilson was the first Australian to win a stage of the Giro in 1982 when he defeated the great French champion, Laurent Fignon, in the third stage to Cortona, Tuscany. He also finished 8th overall in 1985, and had three other stage podiums.
It wasn’t until 1990 that an Australian wore a race leader’s jersey when Phil Anderson claimed the maglia azzurra - an award made between 1989 and 2015 for the cumulative leader at the midpoint of a stage, named the intergiro.
The trickle of Australians during the 1990s became a flood after the turn of the century. More than 70 Australians have now ridden the Giro. More than a dozen riders have won stages, including Robbie McEwen with an amazing 12 wins, as well as nine seconds and four thirds.
Jai Hindley’s victory completes the quest that Australian cyclists began 70 years earlier.
Kevin Andrews is the author of ’Great Rivalries – cycling and the story of Italy’.
