He last wore the rainbow jersey more than thirty years ago, but Gianni Bugno is back on Italian roads in full world champion’s stripes — this time aboard a pedal-assisted e-bike at the 2026 Giro-E Enel race.
Now 62, the Lombardy-born campione is one of the marquee names in this year’s eighth edition of the Giro-E, the world’s only stage race for e-bike teams, which runs alongside the Giro d’Italia on the same closed roads over 18 stages from Amantea in Calabria to Rome. Racing for the Valsir 2 team, Bugno brings with him a palmarès that still commands reverence: two consecutive UCI Road World Championship titles in 1991 and 1992, the 1990 Giro d’Italia won wire-to-wire from the opening prologue to Milan, victories at Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders, and around 60 professional wins in a career that briefly placed him at the summit of world cycling.
Thursday’s Stage 3 — a 221.8-kilometre leg from Pompei to Naples — brought the e-peloton into one of Italy’s most electric and chaotic cities, the same finish-line venue where the Giro d’Italia’s own Stage 6 ended in another crash-filled sprint.
Fortunately, the Giro-E riders stayed upright.
In the team general classification after three stages, Sara Assicurazioni leads on 481 points, narrowly ahead of Autostrade per l’Italia on 478. Bugno’s Valsir 2 squad sits twelfth overall on 326 points, while sister team Valsir 1 is ninth on 349, leaving the Valsir squads with ground to make up heading into the mountain stages.
Bugno joins this year’s e-field with cycling greats Claudio Chiappucci (Regina), Igor Astarloa (Valsir 1), Damiano Cunego (Continental), Andrea Tafi (Autostrade per l’Italia), and first-time Giro-E participant Giacomo Nizzolo (RCS Sport & Events). The 2026 edition covers 1,091 kilometres and 20,450 metres of elevation gain — more than twice the height of Mount Everest — with major mountain stages to Blockhaus, Corno alle Scale, and Piancavallo still to come.
The Giro-E may run on battery-assisted machines, but for anyone who watched Bugno float over Alpe d’Huez or dismantle the world’s best in Stuttgart, the sight of those rainbow stripes weaving through the Italian countryside needs no explanation.
Giro-E information, teams and rules HERE
Photo Credit: RCS
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