The Maglia Nera was a black

jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label=Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependencies, Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west F ...

awarded as a symbolic prize in cycling competition at the Giro d'Italia, given to the last man to finish the race. It was allocated between 1946 and 1951. The competition for the jersey came from the time Italian soccer star Giuseppe Ticozzelli who competed in the

1926 Giro d'Italia The 1926 Giro d'Italia was the 14th edition of the Giro d'Italia, a Grand Tour organized and sponsored by the newspaper ''La Gazzetta dello Sport''. The race began on 15 May in Milan with a stage that stretched to Turin, finishing back in Mi ...

as an independent while wearing his black jersey of the football team he played for (Casale). He completed three stages and would often take rest breaks for food, he had to drop out of the race after being run over by a car. There was real competition to win this particular jersey. Especially noted are the struggles between Sante Carollo and Luigi Malabrocca, to see who could waste the most time. Each tried to lose more time than the other by hiding in bars, barns, and behind hedges, or even by puncturing their own wheels. In 1948 the honor was awarded to the Tuscan

Aldo Bini Aldo Bini (30 July 1915 – 16 June 1993) was an Italian road bicycle racer. He won several one-day races, as well as four stages of Giro d'Italia in 1936–1937. He placed second at the 1936 World Championships and 48th in the 1938 Tour de Fr ...

, who according to some journalists and fans of the time, stubbornly continued the race until the end, despite a broken right hand suffered in a mass crash, and the suffering that especially in the mountain stages forced him to get off the bike and push it uphill. The special ability of the black jersey was, in addition to not being "discovered", to reach the finish directly within the maximum time. The term "maglia nera" was later used in other contexts to indicate the bottom club in a league, often giving it a negative connotation. In 2008 a similar "black number" was introduced, won by

Markus Eichler Markus Eichler (born 18 February 1982 in Varel) is a German former professional road bicycle racer. In 2011, he had originally signed with an Australian team called Pegasus, but that team failed to secure a UCI license of any kind, leaving its ...

Team Milram A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to info ...

Winners

References

;Footnotes ;Citations ;Bibliography * {{Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia

nera Nera may refer to: People * Nera Smajic (born 1984), Bosnian-born Swedish footballer * Nera Stipičević (born 1983), Croatian actress * Nera White (1935–2016), American basketball player * André António Ribeiro Novais (born 1988), Portugue ...

Italian sports trophies and awards Ironic and humorous awards

Winners

See also

References