Photo by {ryan}

As a competitive cyclist who mourned the postponement of this year’s only professional race in the District, I was ecstatic, though slightly skeptical, to stumble acros the news this morning that organizers of the Giro d’Italia, one of the three grand tours of international cycling, were thinking of bringing the opening stages of the race to D.C..

According to quotes allegedly made by race Director Angelo Zomegnan to Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, Mayor Adrian Fenty, himself an avid cyclist, has pushed the idea. “For some time we have had the idea of holding the Giro’s start in America. But now there exists a concrete interest from the city of Washington,” Zomegnan told the Gazzetta, according to CyclingNews.com.

The three grand tours – the Giro, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana – often start in other countries. This year’s Tour de France, for example, started in Monaco, while next year’s Giro is slated to kick off in Amsterdam. The proposal for bringing Italy’s biggest race to the District would likely come in 2011, and also include stages in New York and Philadelphia.

Like I said, I’m both ecstatic and skeptical. For fans of cycling, seeing a stage of a grand tour is like getting tickets to the Super Bowl – for free. But the Gazzetta article everyone is quoting is nowhere to be found online, and I’m doubtful that race organizers would want to deal with the grousing of close to 200 riders and their support staff over the eight-hour flight and six-hour time difference they’d all have to endure in the midst of one of the most physically taxing things a human can do to their body. And when we ran this by Mayor Fenty’s office for confirmation, they responded, “First we’ve heard of it.” They said they’d continue looking into it.

Once we get more solid confirmation from Fenty’s office, we’ll update.