Etna patent: to get it you have to climb seven slopes in 24 hours

It all started thanks to the former Umbrian professional Paolo Alberati, who lives here in Sicily and welcomed a boy Egan Bernal to the island, when the Colombian was a champion of mountain biking. Today the Giro d’Italia climbs Mount Etna, the first of the five uphill finishes in the pink race, and climbs on an unprecedented side, dedicated to Marco Pantani. Etna has seven slopes, which have been grouped in the cycling park created in 2018 by Alberati, and for those who climb them in 24 hours there is the Etna patent as a prize.

Warning for those who want to try: the total positive difference in height of the seven slopes is 8,397 kilometers (Everest has its summit at 8848 meters), and to achieve it you have to travel over 240 kilometers. “Since June 2021, when we inaugurated the seventh and last slope from Biancavilla, the one that will make the Giro, only seven people have succeeded: five men and two women”. The two girls are London-based Elizabeth Simpson, an English teacher who arrived in Catania over thirty years ago with an Erasmus project and stopped to live in the city of Etna, and the Catania doctor Francesca Rubulotta, who then moved in Canada and returns to his hometown to cycle on the slopes of the volcano.

The detail The seven sides of Etna are distributed from north to south-west, and are named after cycling champions and also the Giro d’Italia. Here they are:

1) side of Fornazzo (north-east), named after Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali

2) side of Linguaglossa (north-east), dedicated to cyclists who are victims of fatal accidents on the road: Michele Scarponi, and the boys Rosario Costa and Tommaso Cavorso, also victims while chasing a dream in the saddle. Many signs have been placed on the side of the road inviting to respect those who ride a bike and to a safety distance of 1.5 meters

3) side of Nicolosinorth-east, (2011), dedicated to Alberto Contador, who here detached Scarponi, won the stage of the Giro and took the pink jersey

4) side of Ragalna (2018), dedicated to the Giro d’Italia: it is the one climbed by the Chaves-Yates couple in 2018 and I arrive at the astronomical observatory

5) side of Pedara (2017), dedicated to Tom Dumoulin winner of the 2017 Giro who faced Etna from this side: stage won by Slovenian Jan Polanc

6) side of Zafferananot yet climbed by the Giro d’Italia, dedicated to Vincenzo Nibali

7) side of Pallet Town (2021), dedicated to Marco Pantani: it is the longest (22.8 km) and is faced today by the pink race.