How ex-Swansea manager Francesco Guidolin discovered cycling's most fearsome climb - Monte Zoncolan

Updated 19/05/2018 at 13:17 GMT

Francesco Guidolin is best-known in Britain for a short and unremarkable spell as Swansea City manager in 2016.

Then-Parma manager Francesco Guidolin cycles up the Passo dello Stelvio in 2009

Image credit: Getty Images

But the Italian has arguably had a greater impact on another sport - by getting the dreaded Monte Zoncolan climb on cycling's Giro d'Italia.

The Giro takes on the Zoncolan on Saturday afternoon, and it really is a beast.

Riders ascend from 530m to 1730m over just 10km of road. The climb has an average gradient well over 10%, and tops out at an eye-watering 22%.

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So what did Guidolin have to do with 'discovering' this iconic challenge? Well, he's a keen cyclist who is pictured at the top taking on the legendary Passo dello Stelvio in 2009 when he was Parma boss.

But we'll let Guidolin take up the story, in an interview with journalist Daniel Friebe - a host of The Cycling Podcast among other pursuits.

It's not wrong to say that I "discovered" the Zoncolan, or at least that I brought it to the Giro's attention. It was the summer of 1998, I'd just become the new Udinese manager and we were doing our pre-season training camp in Arta Terme in Friuli.

On the first day of the camp, a guy from Sutrio, the village on the east side of the Zoncolan, approached me on the training pitch and asked me whether I'd like him to show me some of the best cycling routes in the area. He mentioned a few climbs and one in particular that he said was absolutely deadly, almost impossible to climb on a bike; this Monte Zoncolan. I said OK.

So on the last day of the camp, off we went, me with a smallest gear of 39x23. I managed three kilometres before I had to get off and walk. I finally climbed back on and made it to the summit, but it was the most I've ever suffered on a bike, on what wasn't much more than a goat track at the time.

A little while later, I mentioned it to the former pro turned TV commentator, Davide Cassani, that I'd done this incredible climb in Friuli, then I think Davide told the Giro boss, Carmine Castellano, who got the local councils involved. The Zoncolan finally got its Giro 'premiere' in 2003.

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