How will the Giro d'Italia's Bulgarian start measure up?

Cor Vos

Bulgaria appears an odd choice for the start of a Grand Tour. There are no current Bulgarian professionals, no race in Bulgaria above the UCI .2 level, the UCI’s lowest accreditation level, and cycling’s following in the Balkan state appears meagre. So, as the Giro’s eighth foreign start since 2010, is this just a money grab from a Grand Tour organiser?

Possibly. But chisel away at the superficial and there might be more to this Grande Partenza than is immediately apparent. Bulgaria is far from what one might call a ‘cycling country,' but the sport has a long tail in Sofia, Plovdiv and beyond.

Bulgaria has a surprisingly long cycling heritage

117 years ago, in 1909, Frenchman Loic Blériot made history as the first person to fly over the English Channel in an airplane. It was a pioneering moment for international travel, making the world a smaller place. In the same year, two cycling races were also founded, as cyclists sought to conquer great distances of their own across Italy and Bulgaria.

Political turmoil and team unrest threaten 2026 Giro startPolitical turmoil in Bulgaria and a growing fight over participation fees have cast a cloud over the Giro d’Italia’s planned 2026 Grande Partenza.Escape CollectiveChris Marshall-Bell

Today, one race is more famous than the other. The Giro d’Italia has gone on to become one of cycling's great masterpieces, while the Tour of Vitosha slowly faded out of existence. The Tour of Vitosha was organised in the year after Bulgaria declared independence from the Ottoman Empire, which had been established in 1902, and took in the mountains to the south of the capital Sofia. Little is known about what eventually happened to this race apart from a record in the French encyclopedia La Rousse. A much-evolved echo of the race now takes place each June as a mountain bike-run duathlon called the Vitosha 100 km.

Only a handful of existing races pre-date the Tour of Vitosha in 1909, proving Bulgaria’s long reach into cycling’s history. Vitosha may not have emulated the Giro, but it was a precursor to one of the sport’s longest-standing stage races. In 1924, the Tour of Bulgaria was created, and today is one of the world’s longest-running national stage races; only beaten by those of France, Belgium and Italy, as well as the Volta a Catalunya.

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