Roberta Monaldini at the 2012 UCI Road World Championships in Valkenburg | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | San Marino |
| Team information | |
| Discipline | Road cycling |
Roberta Monaldini is a road cyclist from San Marino. She participated at the 2012 UCI Road World Championships. [1]
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.
San Marino, officially the Republic of San Marino, also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino, is an enclaved microstate surrounded by Italy, situated on the Italian Peninsula on the northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains. Its size is just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi), with a population of 33,562. Its capital is the City of San Marino and its largest settlement is Dogana in the municipality of Serravalle. San Marino has the smallest population of all the members of the Council of Europe. With Italian being the official language, along with strong financial and ethno-cultural connections, San Marino maintains close ties to its much larger neighbour; it is located close to the riviera of Rimini, one of Italy's main coastal resort areas.
The 2012 UCI Road World Championships took place in the southern part of the Dutch province of Limburg, also known as South Limburg, between September 15 and 23. The event consisted of a road race and a time trial for men, women and men under 23, and team time trials for elite men and women. It will be the 79th Road World Championships. Castelfidardo near Loreto in Italy was also a candidate, but Italy had held the UCI Road World Championships in Varese in 2008. The Netherlands last hosted the Road World Championships in 1998 in Valkenburg aan de Geul and this time it was the seventh time in total that the country has hosted the championships.
