Cycling’s least enviable prize! Giulio Ciccone lands consolation award after controversial European Championship photo-finish heartbreak

Three millimetres cost Giulio Ciccone the European road race title. Six weeks later, they’ve earned him a trophy. The Italian has been named the winner of the Catena Incatricchiata, a tongue-in-cheek award for the season’s unluckiest racing moment, after his photo-finish defeat to Remco Evenepoel in Slovenia.

Ciccone is due to receive the prize on Sunday evening at the Circolo Sportivo Ortovero’s gala dinner in Albenga. The trophy is a bicycle chain mounted on a wooden plaque bearing his name. Massimo Botti and Eurosport commentator Riccardo Magrini came up with the award in 2013, taking its name from Magrini’s description of the dropped chain that cost Andy Schleck the yellow jersey at the 2010 Tour de France.

Ciccone was the only rider to follow Evenepoel’s decisive attack in the men’s elite road race on 4 October. With Italian teammate Christian Scaroni chasing behind, he could afford to spend much of the finale on Evenepoel’s wheel. He slipped through on the inside of the final bend in Sencur and opened his sprint first, but Evenepoel closed the gap and threw his bike at the line. Race timer EvoData put the difference at 0.0002 seconds, an estimated 2.8 to 3.3 millimetres at sprint speed. Scaroni took bronze, 59 seconds behind.

The following day, Ciccone publicly questioned the verdict. He said on Instagram that he had watched the footage hundreds of times and still couldn’t reconcile what he saw with the result. He called Evenepoel the strongest rider in the race and asked to see proof that the scan matched the exact point where the race was judged. Under UCI rule 1.2.100, that is the point where the front tyre reaches the vertical plane above the leading edge of the painted finish line.

The European Cycling Union stood by the result. It said officials had two independent photo-finish images to check the order, one from each side of the road. Each image stitches together successive scans of the same narrow strip at the finish, which explains why the bikes can appear stretched or compressed.

Evenepoel told La Gazzetta dello Sport before Il Lombardia that he understood why Ciccone had spoken out and thought he would have done the same in his position. Ciccone, speaking separately, said he had felt disappointed and wanted to move on. Six weeks after that sprint in Sencur, the Ortovero club has given him something to take home from it besides a silver medal.