The 2026 Giro d'Italia covers 3,468km of racing, but riders and teams face a huge extra logistical challenge and an extra 1,000km transfer on Monday to get from the start in Bulgaria to Italy.
Stage 3 finishes in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia on Sunday at 5pm local time and stage 4 starts in the southern Italian town of Catanzaro at 1.40pm CEST on Tuesday. There are 40 hours between stages but everyone in the Giro caravan faces a race against time to make the 1,000km transfer and to arrive in Italy on Monday.
The riders and key staff will fly from the Bulgaria capital Sofia to Lamezia Terme airport in southern Italy during what is officially the first rest day of the race. Riders insist on calling it a travel day and will still want to go for a training ride and enjoy a massage on Monday afternoon. That means equipment, bikes and staff need to be in place in Italy on their arrival.
For everyone else, the transfer is a logistical challenge that has left teams doubling up their team vehicles, bringing in extra personnel and cutting some of the usual recovery 'luxuries' such as food trucks and matresses that teams usually enjoy.
Race organisers RCS Sport have also doubled up, with a new mini-Grande Partenza infrastructure created in Catanzaro for those who only join the race caravan in Italy. With around 2,000 people in the Giro caravan, it is a logistics nightmare.
The Bulgarian government reportedly paid RCS Sport €12.5 million to host the Giro Grande Partenza, far more than any Italian city or region could ever pay.
RCS Sport face their own extra costs but have budgeted carefully to earn as much as possible from the Grande Partenza. According to a recent Cyclingnews special feature on the commercial and cultural value of the Giro, RCS Sport generates revenue of €80 million and around €22 million in profit per year.
Team expenses such as hotels, fuel and other costs are traditionally largely covered by race organisers but some teams feel they have been forced to 'pay to race' at the 2026 Giro d'Italia due to the extra costs they face travelling to Bulgaria, only a year after the start in Albania.
Grand Tour organisers usually pay a participation fee of around €60,000 per team and provide beds and meals for around 30 riders and personnel. However in recent years, teams have brought in extra staff such as osteopaths, coaches, and chefs, plus extra carers and mechanics. A team for a Grand Tour can include 50 people, with teams having to pay race organisers for extra hotel beds, often paying back more that they receive in the participation fee.
Cyclingnews understands that the AIGCP, the International Association of Professional Cycling Teams, was locked in tense negotiations with RCS Sport about the financial contribution, even before the route of the 2026 race was presented in Rome last December.
According to Escape Collective a deal was eventually struck with teams receiving around €130,000 each plus flight vouchers with low-cost airline WizzAir worth €5,000 for the flights out to Bulgaria. The AIGCP’s Managing Director, Marc Chovelon, told Cyclingnews that the final figure "fell below the level requested by the majority of our teams."
Planes, buses and team cars needed to transport the 2,000-person Giro caravan
Most riders travelled to Bulgaria on Tuesday evening, in time for the pre-race 'suivi médical' checks and UCI blood tests on Wednesday morning. Italians Alberto Bettiol, Diego Ulissi, Damiano Caruso and Giulio Ciccone cobbled together to take a private jet from Milan directly to Burgas on the Black Sea coast. Other riders and staff had to fly to the capital Sofia and then drive five hours to Burgas.
Team staff faced a longer haul, setting off three or even four days earlier for the long drive from their service course headquarters in western Europe to Burgas. The Unibet Rose Rockets teams indicated they faced a 23-hour, three-day drive from their base in the Netherlands to Bulgaria. Some teams were closer but Movistar vehicles had to travel from their base in northern Spain.
Other teams faced similar long hauls and so opted to create two support teams: one for Bulgaria and another one for Italy. Some team staff in Bulgaria will then head north for the Tour de Hongrie that starts on May 13, where seven WorldTour teams will be in action. However some teams simply do not have two buses available nor two sets of team vehicles.
"We have to work with two different teams," Lotto-Intermarché sports director Bart Wellens told Wielerflits.
"There is a part of the staff who only handle the Italian block and a part that is only active in Bulgaria, because you can’t get everything done in Italy on a single rest day."
Some vehicles will drive a 1,000km south to Greece on Sunday to catch a ferry from Igoumenitsa to Brindisi or Bari in the southern heel of Italy.
Team buses and other vehicles will leave before Sunday's stage start but face a race against time to reach Igoumenitsa for a 1am ferry to Italy. The boat should arrive after nine-hour sail but there is then a final 390km drive to the team hotels near Catanzaro in the toe of the Italian peninsular.
Some riders have been left without their special mattresses and recovery aids and team chefs are cooking in hotel kitchens.
"Many teams, including ourselves, chose to go to the start in Bulgaria with a minimal number of vehicles. After all, the race there lasts only three days, so we make do with a little less luxury," Wellens told Wielerflits.
"I will be relieved when we reach mainland Italy on day four. Then the worst is behind us logistically, and the stress can ease up a bit. It was a difficult start to organise as a team this year. Lets not forget that when we are on the Italian mainland, there are still a lot of other transfers to do."
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