On the Croce d’Aune pass, between the Vette Feltrine and the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park, a cycling race in the 1920s changed forever the way, all over the world, a bicycle wheel is removed.
The most widely accepted tradition places the episode in November 1927, during a cycling race on the roads of the Feltre area that also passed through the Croce d’Aune pass, at around 1,011 metres above sea level, at the gateway to the Vette Feltrine. Some sources report a slightly different date (discussed further down this page, in a dedicated note): a detail cycling historians have never definitively settled, but one that changes neither the substance of the events nor the place where they happened.
“Something back here needs to change.” With these words, uttered with difficulty on a frozen pass in the Belluno Dolomites, begins the story of one of the most important inventions in the world of cycling.
The day a climb changed cycling
In the 1920s, changing gear on a bicycle was a slow and complicated operation. Wheels were fixed to the frame with wingnuts that had to be unscrewed by hand to turn the wheel and change sprocket, according to the systems used at the time. Under normal conditions this already took time and dexterity; on a climb, with hands numb from the cold, it could become almost impossible.
This is exactly what happened to Tullio Campagnolo, then a young amateur cyclist from Vicenza, during a race that wound through the roads of the Feltre area and climbed up to the Croce d’Aune pass. The intense cold of that day had numbed his hands to the point of making it almost impossible to quickly loosen the nuts holding the rear wheel in place. As his rivals overtook him, Campagnolo lost precious minutes fighting with his frozen fingers and a mechanical system that, at that moment, proved simply inadequate.
It was not a defeat like any other. From that struggle, historical accounts say, came the intuition that would lead Campagnolo to imagine a system for releasing and locking the wheel without having to work on screw-on nuts anymore: a lever mechanism, quick, effective even with cold hands. From that intuition, in the years that followed, the quick release would be born.
Tullio Campagnolo: from cycling to invention
Tullio Campagnolo was born in Vicenza on 26 August 1901. As a young man he took up competitive cycling as an amateur, racing on unpaved roads and demanding routes such as those of the Prealps and the Venetian Dolomites, including, precisely, the Croce d’Aune pass.
It is precisely from a racing mishap, in November 1927, that the idea was born which would take him far from racing and close to a workbench. In the years that followed, Campagnolo developed and perfected the quick-release mechanism, patenting its cam-lever version in 1930: a system that allows the wheel to be locked and unlocked with a simple lever, without any longer needing to unscrew nuts by hand.
In the early 1930s the company bearing his name was officially born: in 1933 the first quick-release hubs were produced and the “Cambio Corsa” was patented, one of the first modern derailleurs in the history of cycling. Other fundamental inventions would follow, such as the “Gran Sport” derailleur presented in 1949, and the introduction, in 1961, of low-pressure die-casting for lightweight alloy components, a technique that revolutionised the production of racing components.
Tullio Campagnolo died on 3 February 1983, but the company he founded in Vicenza remains, to this day, one of the most prestigious and recognised brands in the history of world cycling, synonymous with Italian-made mechanical precision (the company’s history is also told on the official Campagnolo website). An idea born on a road in the Belluno Dolomites became, over time, a piece of Italian industrial history.
Croce d’Aune pass: a gateway to the Vette Feltrine
The Croce d’Aune pass sits at around 1,011 metres above sea level, in the municipality of Sovramonte, and ideally connects Pedavena, at the foot of Monte Avena, with the Sovramonte plateau, in the heart of the Belluno Prealps. It is one of the Feltre area’s historic passes, long a crossing point between the plains and the mountains, and today it is also one of the most striking gateways to the Vette Feltrine and the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park.
For cyclists, Croce d’Aune is a classic destination of Belluno cycle tourism: a demanding but manageable climb, with views ranging from Monte Avena to the peaks of the National Park, combining sporting effort with the discovery of a still-authentic area. It is no surprise that it has also been chosen as an approach stage in several editions of the Giro d’Italia, nor that the area around Feltre has become over the years a reference point for those who love cycling between asphalt and gravel, as in our gravel route from Feltre to Cima Grappa.
It is right here, at the top of the pass, that a monument to Tullio Campagnolo now stands, commemorating the episode that in 1927 made him, unwittingly, the protagonist of one of the most influential intuitions in the history of world cycling. A small permanent mark that forever ties this corner of the Belluno Dolomites to a story known throughout the world. Anyone wishing to explore this area by bike can find some inspiration among our cycling routes in the Dolomites, including the route dedicated precisely to Croce d’Aune by bike.
The Giro d’Italia and Croce d’Aune
The bond between the Croce d’Aune pass and top-level cycling does not end with Tullio Campagnolo’s story. Over the years the pass has repeatedly been included in the route of the Giro d’Italia, helping to keep alive, among insiders and enthusiasts, the memory of the place where the quick release was born. In 2019 the Giro d’Italia returned to these very roads, bringing media and sporting attention back to the Feltre area and its historic link with the cycling industry.
The wider Belluno area also has a strong relationship with Italy’s stage races: this is shown, for example, by the recent time-trial stage of the Giro d’Italia Women that touched Belluno and Nevegal. A thread that connects, in different eras, the same dolomitic territory to the spectacle of top-level international cycling.
Croce d’Aune pass. Photo: Ulflulfl / Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0.
When a problem becomes an idea
It was not a laboratory that generated the idea of the quick release, nor a project drawn up at a desk to meet a market need. It was a mountain road, a lost race, the cold and the frustration of a young cyclist who, for a few minutes lost on a pass in the Belluno Dolomites, found himself facing a very concrete problem: a mechanical system that, in the real conditions of the race, simply did not work as it should have.
It is in this gap between theory and the real exertion of the climb that the origin of the most lasting innovations is often hidden. Campagnolo was not trying to invent something: he was only trying to get going again. But from that difficulty, experienced firsthand on a road in the Feltre area, came an observation that no engineer shut away in an office could have formulated in the same way: the problem was not the wheel, it was the way the wheel was locked in place.
It is a reminder that still holds true today, well beyond the world of cycling: the best ideas often come not from abstract inspiration, but from a concrete obstacle faced in the field, or on a mountain road.
Croce d’Aune today: a pass, a symbol
Today the Croce d’Aune pass remains, above all, a simple and authentic place: a pass in the Belluno Prealps, gateway to the Vette Feltrine and to the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park, one of the places to see in the Belluno Dolomites, valued by hikers and cyclists for its views and for the tranquillity of a still uncrowded area. It is a piece, often little told, of the wider history of the Belluno Dolomites: a heritage made as much of nature as of human stories like that of Tullio Campagnolo. But for those who know this story, every pedal stroke on these roads takes on an extra meaning.
Croce d’Aune is not just a pass to climb. It is one of the places where modern cycling began to take shape.
Historical note: a date that is not entirely certain
Historical sources agree on the substance of the events, but not on every detail. The most widely accepted tradition, also echoed by encyclopaedic sources and by features dedicated to the Croce d’Aune monument, places the episode on 11 November 1927. Some minority sources instead report an earlier date, 4 November 1924. This page adopts the most widely accepted dating (November 1927), also used in a feature dedicated to the Croce d’Aune monument, while noting, for completeness and historical accuracy, that this discrepancy exists between sources.