The Giro is proving to be popular in Gemona and its surroundings
2026 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the "Orcolat," the Orcaccio: the earthquake of May 6, 1976, which caused nearly a thousand deaths (400 in Gemona alone) and the destruction of entire villages. The survivors and their descendants have offset the 29.000 billion lire cost of rebuilding. And a year from now, it will be the centenary of the death (in Gemona del Friuli) of Ottavio Bottecchia, the first Italian to win the Tour de France in 1924.
1976-2026.
Friuli does not forget.
And give thanks.
Half a century has passed since the earthquake in Friuli (6,5 on the Richter scale) of May 6, 1976, the fifth in order of death, bowed to a very bitter fate and lost 965 fellow countrymen due to the devastation with its epicenter in Gemona: 990 dead, 90.000 displaced on the shores of the Adriatic.
On Saturday, May 30, the Giro d'Italia will pay tribute to the approximately 400 victims of the Gemona and the entire region with a stage that will start from Gemona del Friuli and climb to Piancavallo, tackling that mountain twice before the final parade the following day in Rome.
The Giro also passed through those parts in 1977 to underline the closeness of the whole of Italy to those people so dramatically affected by an event, considered the fifth in the peninsula in terms of victims caused and therefore far from the record figure of 90.000 for the Messi-Reggio Calabria race in 1909.
And he returned for a stage that started in nearby Austria (Sillian) in 2026, on his sad thirtieth birthday. German Stephan Schumacher prevailed over Venetian Marzio Beuseghin, who thus failed to show off the winner's crown to his beloved donkeys. At the time, I was in the pink team car, never sticking my head out of the open sunroof because—as we all know—I prefer to be rather than appear like my predecessors and, sadly, even their successors.
We returned to Gemona for an event promoted by Walter Delle Case, a former professional cyclist who, in the early 1980s, denounced the entire Italian cycling community's subservience to Francesco Moser and Giuseppe Saronni. He called them "The Sheriffs," and he had good reason to, considering that—after their victorious blitz at Cles in Val di Non—he heard one of them say: "You'll never win another race." That's how he was addressed by the enfant du pais Francesco, who had wanted to conquer Cles, his homeland, even longer than another world champion (Maurizio Fondriest).
We returned to Gemona, we were saying, to experience some unforgettable moments in the city we've always loved. Why?
- Just 21 years old and looking for a job in journalism, I was drafted as an "illegal"—the contemporary free-lance…—to fill the editorial office of a major newspaper because Friuli was engulfed in tragedy on May 6th at 21:00:12 PM. I remember as if it were yesterday that phone call to one of the Carabinieri barracks where I could get news, and the response the guard on the other end of the line bounced back to the person in Milan: "There's been an earthquake. A van with two colleagues left the barracks, but returned almost immediately because the road is no longer there." And if the horizontal paved road is no longer there, who knows what will happen to the houses that are built vertically, we thought. A disaster.
- Every now and then we hear from friends and acquaintances from Cantù (Como) about the spontaneous volunteering called to the fore by Gianni De Simone, director of La Provincia, who stimulated the generosity of the members of the Pro Loco, of the furniture artisans and of the construction companies like Mondelli, who rushed to Friuli to build and complete – for example – the 30 housing units of the Villaggio Lario in Oseacco di Resia (province of Udine, a valley parallel to that of the Pontebbana which exhausts Gemona) to allow at least a handful of displaced people to return from Lignano.
- Once in charge of the Giro d'Italia, with the valuable support of the late Enzo Cainero, in 2006 we wanted to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Friuli massacre by including the third stage of historical and commemorative value in the 21 stages conceived also to reinvigorate the due tributes in memory of the Italians who died fifty years earlier in Belgium, at Bois de Cazier, Marcinelle (176 compatriots lost out of the total 265 victims) and the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Vespa (1946), the first monocoque scooter that began to make... Racing Italy on a par with the Fiat 500 and 600.
Returning to Friuli, one finds oneself in a cauldron of extraordinarily powerful feelings. "Friuli does not forget. And gives thanks," is emblazoned everywhere. It underpins every thought of the people, who, thanks to the government's impetus, quantified at 500 million of the old Lira, the additional 100 million received from the Americans at the Aviano Air Base, and the dogged perseverance of the civil defense team led by Giuseppe Zamberletti, have been able to rise from the rubble of the "Orcolat," the Orcaccio, as the locals call the 1976 earthquake, over time erasing the handicap of the costs, quantified at 29.000 billion lire!
Fifty years later, Gemona and its surroundings appear like a corner of paradise. Perhaps because the Giro d'Italia cannot be unwelcome, the flowerbeds have been lush with pink-petalled flowers for days, the bicycles parked in the center of traffic islands have been repainted pink, and more pink drapes of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia regional flag, with the golden eagle on a blue field, hang from balconies and windows.
Jonas Vingegaard, the sole champion of the 2026 Giro, will enter a tunnel as pink as his jersey, which only he can lose, given that the competition is what it is… that is, paltry. And perhaps he'll fall in love with Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which he wears on his chest as the race's main sponsor, so much so that he'll return in May 2027 to defend it. With the Vuelta-Tour-Giro triplete over, he'll be able to enjoy himself without too much pressure in Trieste, where Giro number 110 will set off. Who knows…
Time will tell. Gemona will surely be back in the headlines in 2027, considering that the mysterious death of Ottavio Bottecchia—the first Italian from nearby Colle Umberto to win the Tour in 1924, later photocopied in 1925—will return to the headlines in 2027, the centenary of his death at the Gemona Hospital, where he was taken by attentive rescuers, who found him dying in nearby Peonis, a hamlet of Trasaghis. Did "Botescià" die on June 15th from injuries sustained in the beating of a farmer who caught him stealing fruit, or from beatings received by another farmer whose wife he had stolen? Or was he struck by illness? Who knows? The mystery has persisted for 100 years. The local descendants and emigrants of the Fogolar Furlans who have taken refuge halfway around the world jealously guard a charade that neither I in “Stories out of the Ordinary” nor Claudio Cregori in his “Il Corno d'Orlando” have been able to unravel.
We'll try again.
