What's a Gregario?
In The Gregarios Superclub Ciclista, your duty is to ride with the group, for the group. It's about fun, style, safety, and developing talent.
Often it’s a career progression from gregario to super-gregario or gregario-de-luxe as they’re sometimes called. From there it’s on to a "protected rider" contract and allowed to target certain races depending on their strengths and the race profile. Then for the privileged few, they may just get to be “team leader”.
Gregarios are the support riders in Italian Racing Teams. Their equivalents are the domestiques in the French teams. It’s a hard life but they do it for the love of racing and the prospect that they’ll get their turn in the spotlight and have an opportunity to “go for the win” when they’re on a good day.
Often it’s a career progression from gregario to super-gregario or gregario-de-luxe as they’re sometimes called. From there it’s on to a "protected rider" contract and allowed to target certain races depending on their strengths and the race profile. Then for the privileged few, they may just get to be “team leader”.
As a gregario in an Italian pro team, here are some of your duties:
- Riding into the wind to shelter your team leaders
- Setting the pace on the front and on the climbs
- Bringing your team leader up to the front
- Chasing down the breakaway groups
- Carrying bidons up the peloton from the team car
- Giving up a wheel when the team leader punctures at a critical moment in the race and the team car is too far away.
In our pre-superclub era, we were so taken with the ethic of the gregario that we decided to name our cycling club after our unsung Italian heroes. We added a snappy slightly retro jersey in vivid blue the exact shade of the Italian National Road Team, and The Gregarios Superclub Ciclista was born. The Blue Train was rollin’!
