8th Memorial Davide Fardelli

The 7.85km circuit - the Elite Women will complete
three laps (click for enlargement)

02.09 Official site
Italy, 23.55km Individual Time Trial, UCI 1.2

Be Pink are Tweeting from the race

↓↓↓Parcours, starters (when available), weather↓↓↓

Davide Fardelli, born on the 6th of January 1972, discovered his love of cycling aboard a mountain bike when he was 28 years old - older than most, so he made sure that he made up for lost time by riding as much as possible. "The bike, you know, is a love that often has no limits" says the official race website; in 2002 he decided to give road cycling a go. While he continued mountain biking, road cycling became his passion and, before long, he began to do well in amateur races. Then, on the 26th of August in 2004, he was badly injured in a crash. Four days later, having experienced a great deal of pain, he died. This race is a celebration of his life and of the sport he loved, now in its eighth edition and bigger than ever before.

It consists of six events in total, all of them individual time trials. The Elite Professional men and women race on an identical 23.55km parcours consisting of three laps of a 7.85km circuit with a small hill (17m in 0.86km, average gradient a little over 1.5%, maximum 4% near the top) beginning just after 1km from the start line. The rest is either slightly descending or flat, making it a parcours likely to generate very high speeds. It's very much a race for the strong time trial specialists who are able to produce a lot of power for a long time through the several straight sections, then do the same again on the next - and keep it up for all three laps. There are one or two points where riders might need to exercise caution, but overall this is not a technical parcours: it's more about power than finesse and even the predicted bad weather is unlikely to create many problems.

The Parcours
The race takes place in a glacial valley just north-east of Lago d'Iseo, Lombardy's fourth-largest lake, beginning at a car park on the SS42 road at Rondinera in Bergamo. Mountains rear up immediately to the north and the fortified village of Castelfranco, atop a rocky outcrop, can just be seen from the road. To the south, more mountains can be seen above the roof line of a building bearing the name Fardelli Ernesto & C. - the headquarters of the Global Radiators company created by Davide Fardelli's father, and where he worked before his death. Having turned right out of the car park and onto the SS42, riders will want to make use of the smooth, modern road surface to get up to a reasonable speed immediately but not risk using up too much energy that might be put to a better use later on. There has been a lot of construction work taking place on the far side of Rondinera, around 0.75km from the start; riders will need to take care on their first passage in case there is sand or mud on the road. This is especially likely with the heavy rain forecast for the end of the week and lighter rain through the weekend as the houses to the left of the road are built right up against the lower slopes of the mountains, giving ample opportunity for soil and stones to be washed down onto the road. If the rain keeps up throughout the race, there's no guarantee that because the road surface was free of mud on one passage it will be on the next, either.

Click for enlargement

After passing a field on the right, the riders arrive at Rogno - three houses (one pale green, two terracotta) on the right mark the beginning of the climb which shouldn't give anyone any problems provided they pace themselves properly through to the last lap. Rogno will never win any "most beautiful village in Italy" competitions: it's an industrialised place where people live and work rather than a tourist trap (and let's face it - it would have some very stiff competition), but it does have its charms. One of the most attractive is the old stone house on the right of the road some 1.56km from the start with a football pitch next door - it not only looks nice, it also provides a handy landmark to let the riders know they've reached the steepest part of the climb. A little further ahead, having passed by the town hall on the left, they pass into a narrower section with buildings right up against the road on both sides, then it opens up again as the riders leave Rogno and head into Bessimo - the two villages are all but contiguous, with only a field separating them.

2011 winner Judith Arndt, seen here at
the 2012 Olympics

Bessimo is more industrialised that Rondinera and Rogno, the grey factories next to road don't give a good first impression when the village is approached from this angle, though the mountains - like most mountains - are breathtaking. The road passes straight through with the riders negotiating a roundabout at 2.85km; to the right is what must be one the most intriguing provincial superstore units anywhere in Europe: an Iperfamily with an entrance that looks like a huge, glass orchid. 0.33km later, they turn right onto the Via Nazionale. It's a wide corner, but taking the fastest and tightest line around it leads straight over two drain covers that could prove perilously slippery (there's a third in the middle of the left-hand lane too, where it could catch out a rider taking a wide line). The road descends past a field to the left and industrial units to the right but is straight enough for fuel spillages left by trucks and tractors to be unlikely to cause problems and so the road can be negotiated at high speed; after rounding a sweeping right-hand bend it narrows considerably and passes under overhanging trees - a spot where some riders might experience punctures. After 0.75km from the right turn, the River Oglio comes into view on the left of the road, a short way further ahead the Lago di Rogno appears on the right before the race enters the most attractive part of the parcours with superb views over Rogno to the mountains on the right and across the river to more mountains on the left, then the road bends right, left and right again before reaching 4.95km from the start and the next corner, where the riders turn left.

It seems almost impossible that the riders were passing industrial units only minutes before at this point on the parcours - there is an old and very beautiful house right by the corner, and the narrow road they turn onto looks as though it runs over an Alpine meadow. Cows are grazed along here but, kept off the road by electric fencing, shouldn't have left any slippery surprises; if the weather forecast turns out to be completely wrong, the main issue on this stretch is likely to be wind - there's little cover and riding into a wind blowing north-east off the lake would be hard work, while riding with a tail wind blowing down through the valley from the high mountains (which top 3,100m only 40km away) would make it more like land-yachting than cycling. The road is narrow but it's flat, smooth, mostly straight and likely to be very fast indeed, any rider who feels she had the strength in her legs when she approaches the finish line for the final time, knowing her race is almost over and that she has no need to conserve energy for layer, could put it to very good use and steal a big lead over her rivals by switching up to full power and then hammering through the 1km section between the left turn at the start and the right turn at the end - and could just as easily lose it in the last 200m, where overhanging trees make punctures more likely than anywhere else on the parcours.

Final kilometre

After the right turn, riders head north along a slightly wider road, passing a cottage on the left before entering a right-left-right S-bend leading into Rondinera 0.21km from the corner and marking 1km to go. 0.3km later (this section apparently has some drainage problems, hopefully not an issue on race day), they come to a crossroads where they turn left. Vehicles are prevented from reaching the crossroads by a line of low concrete bollards just around the corner - they will have to pass between these. The road is straight and extends for 0.2km; at the end - having passed through an alleyway between the buildings at the far end - they turn left back onto the SS42, ride back past Global Radiators and return to the start line.

Results

1. Edwige PITEL 33'29"
2. Martina RITTER +15"
3. Pascale SCHNIDER +21"
4. Patricia SCHWAGER +25"
5. Katarína HRANAIOVÁ +53"
6. Oxana KOZONCHUK +54"
7. Thrude KARLSEN +57"
8. Doris SCHWEIZER +1'18"
9. Jacqueline HAHN +1'19"
10. Susanna ZORZI +1'20"
Full results


Weather
Not looking good at all. Thunderstorms and 47mm of rain are predicted for Thursday, which is more than enough to bring mud onto the roads as described above. Sporadic heavy rain is also predicted for Friday, then heavy showers on Saturday. Race day morning should be dry with the wind blowing up the valley from the south west, more showers are expected in the afternoon when the wind will reverse direction - however, it'll be no stronger than around 5kph. Maximum temperature is expected to be around 27C.