The first mountain stage of the 2026 Giro d’Italia finishes on top of a mountain with a strange name. Chris Sidwells takes a look at its history...
The 2026 Giro d’Italia will have an interesting start in Bulgaria but will really explode once back in Italy. Stage 7 starts in Formia on the Lazio coast, halfway between Naples and Rome, and ends 244-slogging kilometres away on top of a formidable mountain called Blockhaus.
Blockhaus is part of the Majella-massif in Abruzzo, Central Italy. It’s 2,145 metres high, so stage 7 literally goes from sea to the sky, but why the Germanic name? Why Blockhaus? It’s simply coincidence, and not to any past alliance between Italy and Germany.
The name is Germanic and describes a small defensive fort, which in the case of this mountain was built in the 1800s to police anti-bandit operations that grew here after Italian unification. The explanation we came across for the name was the fort’s commander was of Austro-Hungarian heritage, and he referred to it as a Blockhaus and the name stuck. However, if you know for certain please tell us.
Anyway, enough history- let’s get onto cycling, and in this Cycling Legends Media Big Read we’ll look at some of the men who have mastered the climb, it wasn’t used in the women’s Giro until 2024, starting with a very young (21) Eddy Merckx.
Eddy Merckx (right) with Tom Simpson before Milan-San Remo in 1967
Eddy Merckx - 1967
It was Eddy’s first grand tour, and the first time Blockhaus had hosted a Giro stage finish. Merckx had already made a name all over Europe. The previous year he’d won his first classic, Milan-San Remo. He says his first victory flattered him a bit, but he won again the following year. He also won Ghent-Wevelgem and Flèche-Wallonne and was 3rd in the Tour of Flanders and 2nd in Liège-Bastonge-Liège before the 1967 Giro started. This is what Eddy says about his debut.
“I was nervous, but things had gone well before the Giro. I had established myself in the Peugeot team and was working in a good way with Tom Simpson. We dominated Paris-Nice, with Tom winning. Then in Milan-San Remo he got in a long break, which tired out our rivals chasing and allowed me to sit back and take the win when the break was caught. I did well in the other classics too, then we split, Tom raced in the Vuelta and I did the Giro.”
Merckx was lying 4th overall before stage 12, Caserta to Blockhaus. “There had been a few breakaways, but the peloton was mostly together at the start of the climb. It thinned out a lot once we started, but I felt good. I hadn’t ridden many mountains before, so I kept following, but when Italo Zilioli attacked with about 2 kilometres to go, I was good enough to chase,” Merckx recalls.
He caught the Italian inside the last kilometre, sat behind him for a bit, then sprinted past to take his first victory in a mountain stage. He also jumped to 3rd overall. Merckx won again two days later, taking a short stage of 90 kilometres that was just like a Belgian kermesse.
“I was holding on well. I lost a place in the time trial shortly after my 2nd stage win, but it was nothing to what happened on the stage that climbed the Tonale Pass. I blew completely on that climb and dropped out of contention (he still finished 9th overall). But I learned a lot from that Giro, and when I thought about it later it gave me confidence.”
Franco Bitossi in 1968
Franco Bitossi - 1968
It was the second Giro for Eddy Merckx, but this was a different Merckx to 1967. That Merckx went to Italy to learn; this one went to win. By the penultimate stage, Rocca di Cambio to Blockhaus, Merckx had the race in the palm of his hand. His Faema team wouldn’t let any of his closest rivals get away, a fact not lost on wily old Franco Bitossi.
Bitossi could climb, he’d won the Giro king of the mountains three times by 1968, but he says 1968 was the year he changed his tactics; “I used to go on long breaks, but I couldn’t get away with that anymore. The others wouldn’t let me, plus I wasn’t as good at riding all day on my own. I had become more explosive though, so I could make attacks at the end of a race and stay away.”
That’s exactly what Bitossi did on Blockhaus. He attacked late while Merckx and his Faema team were controlling things. Bitossi was just inside the top 10, but nearly 20 minutes down on Merckx, so Faema cut him some slack, although he reckons Merckx always had a soft spot for him.
“Eddy listened to me. I was older, far more experienced and liked to enjoy my racing. Eddy was very serious, and in his early days he rode at the front of races right from the start. That made the others nervous, and it made the racing harder. I told him if he came off the front his rivals would take it easy too. He relaxed a bit after that, but not much. At least the races didn’t start as fast after I’d had a word with him,” Bitossi says.
Jose-Manuel Fuente (centre) poised to attack Merckx
Jose-Manuel Fuente - 1972
The 1972 Giro d’Italia was a battle between one man, Eddy Merckx and a team of Spanish climbers. Looking back at the raw statistics of Eddy Merckx’s career you could be forgiven for thinking that he was invincible, but he wasn’t.
Men like Roger De Vlaeminck, Walter Godefroot and Eric Leman could beat him in the cobbled classics, and Frans Verbeek would fight him wherever and whenever he could, regardless of terrain. Merckx also had his hands full in stage races with riders like Felice Gimondi, Luis Ocana, and the Spanish KAS team, especially Jose-Manuel Fuente.
“KAS were all good climbers, that was a problem. Fuente was the best, but you could not allow any of them to gain much in the mountains. I think the team had 3 riders in the top 5 of the 1972 Giro. They fought me hard in a lot of races, but they gave me a very difficult day on the Blockhaus climb in 1972,” Merckx says.
The stage was only 48 kilometres long, but almost all of it uphill. It ran from sea level at Francavilla al Mare to the top of Blockhaus. The climb really bit at Pretoro, where the yellow and blue KAS jerseys hit the front.
It took them 2 kilometres to rip the race to ribbons. The tiny Spaniards buzzed around Merckx like angry wasps, dive-bombing him with attacks. Lazcano put in the first serious one, and Merckx did the only thing he could. “I went as hard as I dared, but at a pace I knew I could keep until the top. I decided the thing to do was ride my race and just take my chance with what the Spaniards might gain,” Merckx says.
He hammered out a brutal but steady rhythm, enough to have the other KAS riders in a line behind him, and enough to bring back Lazcano. Merckx was slowly drawing the sting from the Spanish wasps, except for one.
Jose-Manuel Fuente, who his fans called Tarangu, a word meaning full of character, was one of the finest climbers ever. He attacked Merckx and put 2 minutes 36 seconds into him by the finish to take over the pink jersey.
Fuente kept it for 3 days, until Merckx inevitably wore him down. But he’d taken the fight to the Belgian, and would carry on doing so throughout the Giro, before Merckx ran out the winner.
Moreno Argentin winning Il Lombardia in 1987
Moreno Argentin - 1984
Cycling underwent a huge revolution in 1984, and that revolution was the sub-plot of the Giro d’Italia. After years of trying, Francesco Moser won the Giro on a course that was made for him.
But the other reason for Moser’s victory was the rejuvenation in his form he’d found by training with Professor Conconi. Conconi had identified that the main limiter to athletic performance was an individual’s anaerobic threshold, and if that threshold could be shifted upwards the athlete would run or ride, ski or swim faster for the same physiological cost.
Of course, history has proved that Conconi discovered a good few other things that helped athletes. Transfusions of an athlete’s own blood to increase its oxygen carrying capacity were widely used at the time, and not illegal then. But later Conconi is said to have introduced the drug EPO to treat competitors he was training, and that was always illegal.
Moser took the 1984 Giro lead on the Blockhaus climb and successfully defended for the rest of the race, but the stage was won by Moreno Argentin. Argentin ended the Giro in 3rd place overall and went on to become one of the best single-day racers ever. He won 3 of the 5 monuments, including Liège-Bastogne-Liège 4 times, and added the 1986 professional road race world title to his 2 national road titles (1983 & 1989).
Looking forward
As we’ve said, the Blockhaus stage is the first in the mountains this year. It’s also the longest of the entire race at 244 kilometres (152 miles). The first 135 kilometres are quite flat, but then comes Rionero Sannitico, a 1000-metre climb.
There’s a short descent, followed by 7 kilometres of 6.4 percent climbing to Roccaraso. Then it’s the Passo San Leonardo, an 8-kilometre drag of 3.4 percent average. A long descent follows, then it Blockhaus, and it’s tough; 13.4 kilometres of average 8.4 percent gradient that is just constantly hard.
It will probably be hot, so don’t miss it. A long hilly stage with a brutal ascent at the end is bound to shape the 2026 Giro. The race is pretty much a mix of hilly and mountainous stage from Blockhaus onwards, so it will be an action-packed curtain raiser after the interesting new start in Bulgaria.
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Photos: Cycling Legends Collection.
