DAY ONE. CORROPOLI, ABRUZZO.“Si, you have come a long way for nothing,” shrugs local journalist, Fillipo, as we sit along a cobbled footpath in the Abruzzo region of eastern Italy, awaiting the arrival of our press guide. “Excuse me?” I squint through a haze of jet-lag, having only arrived from Australia a day earlier at the invitation, and expense, of the race organisers. Fillipo shrugs again, and we wait.
It’s just a few hours before the official team presentation of the 2023 Adriatica Ionica Race—an emerging stage race on the UCI Europe Tour, barely five years old but brimming with ambition under the guidance of revered 1986 Road World Champion, Moreno Argentin. Yet all is eerily quiet in Piazza Pié di Corte, centre of the medieval village of Corropoli, around 50km north of Pescara.
For a small community like Corropoli, hosting the grand partenza of Adriatica Ionica is a big deal. In preparation, the local roads are closed, as is the nearby school. But little else appears to be happening. The frowns of the town’s lonepoliziotto, a tall and immaculately dressed middle-aged man pacing earnestly back and forth, are matched only by the procession of WorldTour and ProTour team managers who, one by one, arrive at race HQ, before departing shortly after with phones glued to their ears. Astana-Qazahkstan. Soudal-Quickstep. Intermarche-Circus-Wanty. Euskaltel-Euskadi. Green Project-Bardiani. Tudor Pro Cycling. They’re all here. Yet, as we soon discover, one critical thing is not. Commissaires.
With only a limited grasp of Italian, deciphering exactly
