Compared to bigger sports like tennis or football, cycling is a relatively low-stakes game – its athletes are paid well, but not that well. But what it lacks in prize money, it more than makes up for in eccentricity, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the podium prizes handed out to victorious riders.
While it’s far from the only race handing out interesting prizes, the Giro d’Italia, currently underway, is particularly notable in this regard. At the start of the Giro’s eighth stage, in the Abruzzese town of Giulianova, then-race leader Primož Roglič was handed a pink diatonic accordion from the local manufacturer, Cav. Giuseppe Ianni & Figli. Look at him up top there, confused and delighted with it.
This kind of thing is no one-off. Two years earlier – also on the eighth stage, also in Abruzzo – Andreas Leknessund was given a pink mystery box that contained another fancy box (wrapped in a third box) which he was appropriately baffled by. (After several days of my pestering, the fancy box manufacturer told me it was a “so-called luxury ‘pocket tray’ or cigar holder”; when I told Leknessund some months later he remained appropriately baffled).
What happened here? @OutOfCycling No one more confused than Leknessund 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/Gt11UGvZ74
— International Cycling Fraternity (@cyclingfrat) May 13, 2023
All these pink artisanal wares, obviously, spark an interest in how the products are chosen and what happens to them after their moment on the podium. Because it’s not just the pink accordion, or the pink mystery boxes: across the calendar, there are all sorts of things handed out, from livestock to bulk produce to cultural hats.
Where do they all go? Do teams have policies on who gets the goods? And what the hell is the deal with the Giro’s ‘indestructible undies’, handed to the race leader each day? Time to find out.
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