20 years ago, my mate Geoff was basking in the afternoon sun in a meadow with his then girlfriend, now wife, Amanda. They were camping at Campitello, a pretty village in a valley in the Dolomites. It was a glorious afternoon. The menu was fresh rolls, local cheese & salami. The beers was staying cool in the icy mountain stream nearby. The peaks were bathed in sunshine. He told Amanda, ‘we must come back here again’.

What he didn’t tell her at the time, however, was that the ‘we’ didn’t include her.

Move forward to 2013. Geoff & Amanda are happily married. They have 2 beautiful children. Their eldest son is studying for his year 12 exams. Geoff has riden the Amy Gillet in Victoria & done well enough to qualify for the UCI final in Trento in September. I, too, qualified in Victoria. My boy is in Year 11, and the UCI final is 2 weeks before the term break. We were faced with a dilemma – stay at home and work, missing the final or take the whole family away, which involved taking kids out of school at a critical time in the education or leave the wives to look after the kids and go on a boys’ holiday in cycling nirvana??

Tough decision, but somone’s gotta do it.

2 tickets to Italy, please.

As soon as Geoff knew that Trento, at the southern end of the Dolomites, was the venue for the UCI final, he started nagging me about a route about 150 km north called the Sella Ronda. Despite my reservations (haven’t you heard of tapering???) he insisted we book accommodation near the circuit to ensure we could ride the route. His early efforts to secure a place paid dividends when he discovered a few weeks later that we were scheduled to arrive in the region the day before one of only 2 days in the year that the route is closed to motorised traffic.

Googling Sella Ronda results in lots of articles about the skiing route around the massif, but a deeper search  on roadie sites will find stories with introductions like ‘if you could do one ride before you die, this is it…’ and the like. Having just completed the circuit, I can only echo these sentiments.

The Sella massif is a spectacular outcrop of granite in one of the most spectacular parts of the world that I have been to. There are 4 ways of getting around it (OK, 5, if you include driving a car..). Skiing is what the route is most famous for, with a series of chair lifts giving you the opportunity to do four massive, different descents in a single day. It is a mountain biking (and a walking) mecca, both of which take advantage of the gondalas & lifts, which seem to run all year long. And there is road cycling, which is why we are here.

The last segment of the drive up from Venice gave us a small taste of the ride to come. We were lucky enough to have clear blue skies as we drove up the Passo Pordoi. The monument to Fausto Coppi at the top of the pass called for an obligatory photo stop then it was down the hill to our chalet on the outskirts of Canazei, only three km from the start of the ride.

The bitumen route around the mountain is about 55 km long, about the same distance as the City of Perth Great Bike Ride. Both events are held on closed roads. Similar in many ways. Differences include the following – The Sella Ronda is in a World Heritage area, 3 of the 4 climbs are Cat 2, just about every corner brings an ‘oh my God’ vista into view, the roads are well maintained, the descents include some scarily good sweeping curves and sharp, cambered corners that you can take (on the Sella Ronda Bike Days) without fear of oncoming traffic. And it is free.

The forecast for ride day was for storms in the afternoon so we made sure we were on the road as close as possible to the road closure time of 8.30. First ride post re-assembling the bike after the flight revealed a few odd squeaks & a bit of adjustment to the seat height was required, but it wasn’t long before we were on the ascent for the 8 km to the 1^st pass of the day.

The gradient on this, and all subsequent climbs, was a steady 7 – 8%. The strava profile of my ride looks like it was drawn with a ruler, a tribute to the Italian engineers who obviously decided years ago that this was the most appropriate angle to build the roads on, no matter what the terrain. Because of this profiling, the rises or descents were always steady, without precipitous climbs or drops, this despite the cliff-like nature of some of the terrain we passed.

We were pleasantly surprised by the lack of (cycling) traffic on the roads. Not sure why, maybe because it wasn’t a massed start event, so cyclists were free to join anywhere along the 55 km circuit at whatever time they pleased, maybe the predicted bad weather kept the locals away? Previous reports of the ride talked of thousands on the route but we always seemed to have plenty of room on the road, and the descents in particular were blissfully unencumbered. As a descending conservative, I relished the opportunity to test my bike skills on carefully designed corners, both hairpin & gentle, particularly enjoyable in the no-motor-traffic environment. Some of the drops will live in my memory as my most special moments on the bike. Welshpool Rd will never be the same again.

 

Passo Campolongo, the 2^nd and shortest of the 4 climbs followed the first descent relatively quickly & easily.

Passo Gardena was a bit different. I had decided up till then to take the Sella Ronda at a comfortable pace – the last time I had tried to push myself (SPR long hills, Sunday 8^th Sep), I developed some knee pain and, with the big race on in a week, it all made sense to take it easy.

Until the guy on the Trek went past ½ way up Passo Gardena.

Despite our relatively gentle approach to the ride, Geoff & I had passed heaps of riders but no one up till then had passed us. This wasn’t, I am sure, a reflection on our strength or fitness, more a snapshot on the type of rider who tackles the route – I think the serious riders wait until they can do the ride under racing conditions. They rock up for the Maratona Del Dolomiti, an annual amateur race that attracts over 9,000 riders, lured by the attraction of the Sella Ronda plus 2 more loops of closed roads, a total of 138 km / 4,190m vertical compared with our humble 55 km / 1,790m…

We let Mr Trek go, commenting as he disappeared up the road on his sculptured legs and the ease with which he rode. He looked young, and strong.

Then I got a bit itchy.

The top didn’t look too far (I forgot that a distance that looks-not-too-far vertically is not the same as a distance that is not-too-far horizontally). So I said to Geoff, ‘I am going to have a crack at chasing Mr Trek’ and headed off. After the 3^rd hairpin bend, I could still see him. After the 5^th, I realised that, given my eyesight, my chances of seeing him again were very slim. I did try to push it to the end of the climb, but it was a sobering lesson to me how humbling this sort of country can be. Memo to self: don’t try and launch an attack 5 km from a summit, no matter how confident you feel.

The fourth & final pass, Passo Sella was not as long as Passo Gardena, but the previous climbs made the gradient feel a bit steeper than my Garmin was telling me. It wasn’t till the next morning, when we looked closely at the photos taken at the top, that we realised what a special climb we had been privileged to ride up – ‘Nibali’ was painted on the road  in the background of our picture, presumably a legacy of recent climb done by the great man and his mates.

I am eternally grateful that Vincenzo chose not to post his time on Strava.

If you ever, ever get the chance, ride the Sella Ronda. You won’t regret it.

Hope to be able to write a race report after the final in Trento next Sunday.

PS Geoff has some great GoPro footage – will post a link when one of us works out how to edit it and upload it to YouTube