Video: The story of the Giro d'Italia

In 1909, a sports newspaper on the brink of financial ruin launched a bike race to sell more copies. The route was designed not by sporting logic but by national politics, sent deliberately through every corner of a country that was only 48 years old and still not entirely sure it was one. That race became the Giro d'Italia. And in the 117 years since, it has produced some of the most extraordinary moments in the history of professional cycling.

Our latest video tells the full story: from Luigi Ganna winning the inaugural edition on roads that barely deserved the name, through the mountain stages that turned the race into something closer to a test of survival than a sporting contest. Fausto Coppi, Eddy Merckx, Marco Pantani, but also Andy Hampsten riding into a Gavia blizzard in 1988 wearing a shower cap under his helmet and plastic bags inside his shoes.