Gran Fondo Roma

Did anyone else do the Gran Fondo Roma last Sunday? I entered after seeing it featured in Bikeradar earlier in the year. The thought of combining a sportive with a trip to Rome sounded attractive – but what a disappointment! The start in the shadow of the Colosseum was impressive but I was too preoccupied with staying upright in the mad scramble of riders to appreciate it. Mass starts are always a bit chaotic but the antics of Italian riders made this worse. They ride like they drive – cutting across all over the place at breakneck speed! Overcrowding was a feature throughout the whole ride, made worse by the fact that the longer 160km route was abandoned a few days before the event and so all 5,000 riders were concentrated on the 103km 'Classico' route.

Italian riders look very impressive with their expensive bikes, but everytime we hit a climb they started going backwards – I've never seen so many Pinarellos wobbling across the road at walking pace! (a metaphor for Rome really... all style and no substance!). On narrow single-track roads this meant you had no choice but to crawl up hills at the pace of the group, there was no room to do anything else. The roads were in an attrocious state, pock-marked with large potholes and craters that were really quite dangerous.

The event was billed as a 'closed road' sportive, and for the first half this is what it was, with marshalls and police doing a good job of stopping traffic at junctions to give riders clear passage. However, in the second half of the ride cars started to appear on the course. Given the volume of riders cars could not overtake them and I rode up one long climb behind a car and motorbike that were belching fumes until I had an opportunity to overtake. Having looked at other online comments it appears that many marshalls simply lost interest after the first 1,000 elite and VIP riders had gone through. But the most astonishing thing of all was that on the way back into Rome we were sent along a busy dual-carriageway for three or four miles. Traffic was nose-to-tail and understandably the Italian drivers were not too happy at sharing the road with thousands of cyclists. It was mayhem and very scary. From the way riders were shouting at marshalls and police they were as unimpressed as I was.

The pasta party at the end was good but not signposted and very hard to find.

Overall it was a big disappointment and downright dangerous. If anyone is considering the 2014 Gran Fondo Roma my advice would be to stay at home and put the considerable cost of flights, accommodation, entry fee etc towards a decent bit of kit!