Palio August 2025 4th fastest time ever: 1:12.70

This time places Anda and Bola fourth in the history of the Palio. It’s even 10 hundredths faster than Pytheos’s time on August 16, 1991 (fifth) and only 1 hundredth slower than Polonski’s legendary time on August 17, 2015, when Selva won with Giovanni Atzeni (Tittia).

The ranking of the best times of all time is therefore:

1. Violenta da Clodia – July 2, 2023 (Selva, Tittìa) – 1:12.39
2. Violenta da Clodia – August 17, 2022 (Leocorno, Tittìa) – 1:12.66
3. Polonski – August 17, 2015 (Selva, Tittìa) – 1:12.69
4. Anda e Bola – August 16, 2025 (Valdimontone, Gingillo) – 1:12.70
5. Pytheos – August 16, 1991 (Pantera, Il Pesse) – 1:12.80

Anda e Bola is the third fastest horse in history, while Violenta da Clodia holds two of the three fastest records. Gingillo becomes the second fastest fantino to win the Palio, with Tittia occupying the top three spots.

In 2011, mayor Franco Ceccuzzi and the city council decided that the time in which the Palio was run no longer added value to the festival and therefore abolished the official Palio timekeeping.

Currently, the timekeeping is managed by the Telegram channel Il Palio Di Siena, which performs 20 manual timekeeping measurements and calculates a statistical average of 18 results, after excluding the lowest and highest times. The times are published on the website ilpalio.org, edited by Orlando Papei. They are also published in local newspapers, including La Nazione Siena.

Although different measurement methods must be taken into account, a full lap of the Piazza del Campo is approximately 330 meters long. The 71 columns marking the inner part of the route are therefore approximately 4.6 meters apart, which corresponds to the lenght of two horses.

The optimal horseback route, one that negotiates all the bends without hitting any poles by taking the shortest route (the so-called ideal route), has been estimated at 339 meters. This means that, if the three laps of the Palio are completed as best as possible, a total of 1017 meters are covered. If the average time for the three laps is calculated as 1 minute and 14 seconds, or 74 seconds, the average speed is 49.5 km/h.