13

MARCO PANTANI

To see Marco Pantani at his best was to believe in magic. He was a vicious climber and a fearless descender. His attacks were things of terrible beauty, mesmerising for their virtuosity and for their violence. Marco was a fighter, with a flare for the theatrical. And more than anything, Marco was unpredictable – as prone to implosion as he was to explosive acts of virtuosity. Marco was mercurial. Has there ever been a rider who deserved that adjective more than Pantani? We use it to mean unpredictable and ever changing, deriving that sense from the planet, which has the fastest orbit around our sun. But the root of the word comes from the Roman god, a messenger from the heavens, the patron of speed and of expression – and also the soul’s guide as it travelled to the underworld. You’d struggle to invent an epithet more fitting for the winner of the 1998 Giro.

With the possible exceptions of Coppi and Bartali, no rider has left a more indelible mark on Italian cycling than Pantani. And even though he’s been dead for more than a decade, a newcomer to the sport would be forgiven for thinking that he was still the biggest star in the peloton, such is the prevalence of flags, banners and graffiti dedicated to him along the roadside during every Italian race.

But Marco wasn’t meant to be a cyclist. As a child, he’d dreamt of playing football for AC Milan, and only turned to the bike after becoming frustrated at being left on the bench by his local team’s coach. He was too small, said the trainer. No good for sports. That diminutive stature might have been a hindrance on the pitch, but on the road it was an advantage and it quickly became clear to the local cycling club that they had a real talent on their hands.

His home town, Cesenatico, is typical of much of the Adriatic coast: vibrant, sometimes garish, built for the sun and coloured happy for holiday-makers; it’s charming, even as its glory fades and the paint peels. The old town is built around a canal and a dock full of fishing boats. By dark, you can see the not-so-distant glow of Rimini to the south, with the gleam of its nightlife seeping out over the water. People go to Cesenatico to sunbathe, and to party, and it was an odd place to find one of cycling’s greatest climbers: born by the seaside, but made for the mountains.

There’s a museum dedicated to him on the edge of town, beside the train station. The Fondazione Marco Pantani. It’s quirky, with a life-size, two-dimensional model of Marco, in perpetual motion thanks to a small motor, climbing to nowhere. The museum celebrates the best of Italy’s last truly universal cycling superstar, with walls covered floor to ceiling by jerseys and by photos of Marco. He liked to paint, and some of his pictures have been hung reverently alongside football memorabilia and old newspaper cuttings. His custom motorcycle takes pride of place, in what is both a touching tribute to a lost talent, and a temple to turn-of-the-century kitsch. Just down the road from the Fondazione, however, there’s a stark reminder of the darker side to Pantani’s life: namely, his tomb. Cesenatico’s cemetery is swarmed by as many as 50,000 cycling fans a year, who come to pay tribute to their late hero, who would now be in his late forties.

Marco grew up on the shore, but his future lay elsewhere, and so did his family’s roots. They’d originally come from Sarsina, a small town that was 50 kilometres inland from Cesenatico, in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. It was the home of the Roman writer Plautus, who was said to have been a great influence on William Shakespeare. It is also a popular pilgrimage site for Catholics possessed of personal devils and wishing to pray to Saint Vicinius, who was famous for performing exorcisms. Demons and drama in the mountains – there could be no place more fitting.

Eddy Merckx won more in a year than Pantani managed in his whole career, but that doesn’t matter. He was about quality more than quantity, and his victories were made all the more special by his obvious frailty. And though time and again all the evidence suggested that he’d never truly fulfil his immense potential, his talent was such that you couldn’t give up on it. Pantani was something to hope for. In him, the Italians saw their next Campionissimo, heir apparent to Coppi, although sadly in the end they had little more in common than the fact that they both died too young. People loved him for his weaknesses as a man and his strength as a rider, for the way in which he overcame both internal and external struggles. His victories were exalted, mythologised, precisely because he wasn’t like Merckx.

Pantani is the last rider to win the coveted Giro-Tour double and one of only seven to ever do so. The others were Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Stephen Roche and Miguel Indurain. But his 1998 Giro win, and the Maillot Jaune that followed in July, were grand tour wins that had for so long seemed beyond him. Great things had been expected of Pantani from a young age, but two serious crashes threatened to derail his career before it had even got going.

By the 1994 Giro, the little climber from Cesenatico was already well known to the sport’s more informed followers, having won the Girobio – the amateur equivalent of the Giro – in 1992, but he was still an unknown quantity in the professional peloton. Ostensibly part of the Carrera team as a gregario to Claudio Chiappucci, Pantani was ready to have the spotlight all for himself, and vowed to retire from cycling if he failed to make an impression that May in the mountains. The 24-year-old did not disappoint. His Corsa Rosa started well, and he climbed his way into the top 10 early on, before losing five minutes and 47 seconds to Evgeni Berzin in a time trial on stage eight. He was out of contention for the GC by the time the race reached the Alps – but not out of ideas. At stage 14’s start in Lienz, Austria, Pantani was in flying form. The 235 kilometres to Merano were billed as the most spectacular of the race, a showcase parcours intended to flaunt some of northern Italy’s most stunning scenery while also pushing the likes of Miguel Indurain to their limits. Undaunted by the route or by the opposition, Pantani attacked in what would become his trademark, impetuous fashion, launching himself out of the main chasing group and into the torrential rain, a kilometre from the summit of the Passo di Monte Giovo. As he crested the climb, Pantani hung his body out behind the saddle, getting his centre of gravity as low as possible and tucking into an incredibly aerodynamic – and dangerous – position for the chase, something he’d learned to do to limit his weight disadvantage on the descent. It took 13 kilometres to catch and pass the day’s leader, Pascal Richard, and from there it was still another 30 to the finish. Gianni Bugno and his Team Polti-Vaporetto drove the hunt, but Pantani stayed away, hammering, toes down as always, on the pedals, hugging the corners, embracing the risks. He took his maiden victory as a professional on one of the Giro’s hardest stages, ahead of Claudio Chiappucci, Miguel Indurain, Bugno and the race leader Evgeni Berzin.

‘Marco was never afraid of being on his own,’ says his first trainer, Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Roncucci. ‘He had the courage and the ability to attack in a race and stay out for 50km. All of his life’s journeys were like that. On the front, alone.’

The next day, almost seven million Italians tuned in to see young Marco lay waste to the peloton and draw blood from the hitherto invincible Indurain. Stage 15 was a brute, and featured a hellish combination of the iconic Stelvio and the Passo di Mortirolo, a climb that many argue is the most challenging in Europe. The Italian Franco Vona from GB-MG-Technogym, a teammate of the previous day’s victim, went on an early break and was the first to summit the Stelvio and by the midway point of the stage, he’d built up a lead of six minutes and 40 seconds over Berzin. Pantani kept his powder dry as the peloton began its ascent of the Mortirolo from Mazzo di Valtellina, but began to test his adversaries as the gradient worsened. Indurain chose not to respond, but the Russian race leader, emboldened by the Maglia Rosa, followed his attacks for a kilometre before succumbing to exhaustion. Marco climbed alone for the next 10 kilometres before passing Vona and reaching the apex of the pass alone, having ravaged the pursuing pack. It took him just 43 minutes and 53 seconds to complete the 12.4 kilometre climb, beating the record set by the 1991 Giro winner Franco Chioccioli by two minutes and 17 seconds. On the descent, Pantani allowed himself to be caught by the Colombian Nelson Rodríguez and Indurain, keeping them company until the final slopes of the day, where he set a blistering pace up the Valico di Santa Cristina before plunging down to the finish in Aprica almost three minutes ahead of his teammate, and ostensible leader, Chiappucci. Incapable of a response, Indurain had looked almost frozen in time as Pantani soared away. It was time for the world at large to sit up and take notice. Almost two thirds of all Italian televisions were tuned in at that moment – as well as millions more across the continent. With his courageous, back-to-back victories, Marco had entered the sport’s elite and endeared himself to the Italian public.

Had it not been for the experience and steady nerves of his teammate, Moreno Argentin, Berzin’s bid for Giro glory could have come undone later in the race, as Marco’s naïve belligerence continued. But the Russian held on, finishing the final stage from Turin to Milan with a GC lead of two minutes and 51 seconds over his young Italian rival. Pantani, for his part, must have felt that he’d won himself, because he had not only outperformed Chiappucci, but also beaten Indurain, the winner of the previous two Giri, to second place on the podium by 32 seconds.

Tragically, that was probably the last time we saw the full expression of Marco’s potential. The physical problems, crashes and internal struggles that would gravely affect his later years were just around the corner. The following year, he was the favourite for the Giro, but while training in the hills around San Marino, not far from his home, a Fiat Punto knocked him from his bike, causing lacerations but no fractures or breaks. The driver was from Cesenatico, and was appalled to find the local hero bloodied on the tarmac. Convalescence robbed Pantani of his early season form, but he still expected to start that spring’s Giro in Perugia on 13 May. Two days before the Grande Partenza, however, a training ride left him in excruciating pain, and he was forced to abandon. He returned for the Tour de Suisse, but at the Tour de France, a change of crank length exacerbated an old pelvic problem – an asymmetrical gait and the erroneous diagnoses that attempted to correct it had almost ended his professional career before it began – causing him so much suffering that he nearly abandoned. Marco was almost back to his best, and his bronze at the World Championships that autumn convinced him that it was worth trying his luck at Italy’s final one-day events of the season, and he planned to ride the Milano–Torino on 18 October to fine-tune his form before the year’s last Monument, the Giro di Lombardia. He should have stayed home. Confusion between race officials and local police meant that a car was able to slip onto the race route on the Corso Chieri, in the suburb of Reaglie, just outside Turin. On the twisting, narrow road, there was no way for the driver or the riders to see one another in time, and when they met, Marco was flung skyward, along with Davide Dall’Olio and Francesco Secchiari. His Carrera bike was in pieces, but worse damage had been done to Pantani. There were breaks to his shin and in the ankle and knee of his left leg. Fragments of bone protruded from his calf. A difficult operation left him with an external splint holding his leg together, with five bolts screwed through his skin. It also left one leg seven millimetres shorter than the other, and cast huge doubts over the future of his career. The splint would stay in place until February 1996, and the scars, both physical and mental, remained for the rest of his life. It wasn’t enough that he had to fight his rivals and the mountains, now Marco was fighting his maimed body, too.

He was a different man when he returned to racing a year later. As a younger rider, his nickname had been L’Elefantino, the Little Elephant, because of his big ears. Understandably, he wasn’t a big fan. In 1997, however, his diamond earring, goatee, gaunt features and the bandana he wore to cover his bald head lent him another kind of appearance. That of a pirate. Il Pirata was a different rider: still capable of brilliance, but wounded, and wracked with self-doubt.

Another crash caused him to abandon the 80th edition of the Giro, but his immense talent finally delivered the following year. After taking the Maglia Rosa on the seventeenth stage, Marco looked in control, but his performance lacked the panache to which his fans had become accustomed. They didn’t have to wait long. Stage 19 was classic Pantani, a rabid assault on the race that left no doubts about what they were witnessing: this was history in the making. Alex Zulle, the two-time Vuelta a España champion who would later become mired in the Festina doping scandal at the 1998 Tour, had led the GC early on but was a spent force by the time the race reached its final week. Pantani’s other main rival, the Russian champion of the 1996 Giro, Pavel Tonkov, had won the day before on a short stage from Selva to the Passo di Pampeago in Trentino. He was better on the flat than Pantani, and could look forward to making time on the Italian in the penultimate day’s time trial. Once the Mapei rider limited his loses to Il Pirata in the high mountains, the Giro would be his.

If Marco wanted to keep his Maglia Rosa, he had to risk it all on that year’s final climb to Montecampione. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the Russian all day. With less than three kilometres to go, it was the final roll of the dice for Pantani, who launched one of the most memorable and mesmerising attacks in recent cycling history. Marco tossed his bandana to the road, his signal that this was do or die. Next went the glasses, and his water bottles. He always told reporters that he did this in order to shed as much weight as possible, but there was a touch of theatre to it, too. And before his final eruption of defiant, expressive energy, he threw his diamond nose stud into the bushes. Later he’d say that he could feel the weight of it pulling him down, and that he’d had a vision of his late grandfather, urging him to get rid of everything he didn’t need. There was no way back from all this. His genius was always characterised by irrevocable gambit. Trying desperately to hold on, to survive Pantani’s onslaught, Tonkov looked like a beaten prize-fighter, battered and blind, grasping for the ropes. If this had been boxing, the referee would have stopped it, but in the high Alps of Lombardy, the Russian found no respite. The gradient increased, and with it, Marco’s ferocity. He needed a statement win, and to take at least half a minute from Tonkov, who could still count on his superior ability in the TT to claw something back. By the summit, he had 57 seconds, and as he crossed the line, time seemed to slow down. He held his arms out, as if on a crucifix, with his exhausted expression and his closed eyes turned to the sky, in what is now one of the Giro’s most iconic images. This was Marco’s masterpiece, expressionistic and in vibrant colour. In the end, he even beat Tonkov in the TT. Superb form and imperious confidence would carry him to glory later that summer in the Tour, and it was as if Marco was riding the crest of a wave of endless possibility. And no one could have known how soon that wave would break. Or how hard.

Though it seems wretchedly unfair, Pantani is probably most famous for what came after his outstanding Giro-Tour couplet. A career that should have delivered so much more joy disintegrated into sorrow and squalor and, eventually, death.

The 1999 Giro was all but decided when Marco’s life was thrown into turmoil. By the time the race reached Madonna di Campiglio, Pantani already had one eye on the Tour. His lead over Paolo Savoldelli was five minutes and 38 seconds – and had been growing by the day. By the morning of Saturday 5 June, however, that lead, and Marco’s life, had been undone. Tests after his victory on the previous stage had revealed a 52 per cent haematocrit level in a blood sample, 2 per cent more than the safe limit that he himself had helped the UCI to set. He was removed from competition for safety reasons. It wasn’t a ban. It wasn’t even an indictment. But to Marco, it was a death blow. The two-week suspension would rob him of his second Giro title, but he was free to start the Tour’s prologue in Le Puy du Fou on 3 July. Marco chose not to.

What happened afterwards is the stuff of soap opera. Immediately after the news broke, Marco went to ground as a media storm threatened to consume him. Debates about clean sport aside, the final GC of the 81st Giro is laughable when you look at the riders allowed to continue. If he was dirty, he couldn’t have been any more grimy than those around him. The entire top 10 have since been caught up in doping scandals of one form or another; in fact, the start list was a who’s who of EPO users, for it was the debut Giro for a young Danilo Di Luca, Italy’s doper par excellence. His samples have since gone missing. Other tests from the same race seemed to contradict the UCI’s findings at Madonna di Campiglio. Years later, a mafia enforcer turned informant claimed that the Camorra crime syndicate in Naples had rigged the whole thing as part of a betting scandal – something that sounds outlandish until you see how deeply they were able to affect other sports. A football betting scandal in 2012 was estimated to have made the crime syndicate more than €2 billion, according to Italian police, and in 2016, the Gazzetta revealed fresh allegations about widespread match-fixing in Serie B and the country’s lower leagues. After that Giro, depression got the best of Pantani. There were truncated attempts at a return, but his heart was no longer in it. He felt that he’d been singled out, and as he succumbed to drug addiction, anger and self-pity snuffed out whatever fight was left in Cesenatico’s little pirate. Marco died a little less than five years later of an apparent overdose, after a cocaine-fuelled binge had left him all but unrecognisable and alone, in a grubby hotel room up the coast from his family and friends, in a dark corner of glittering Rimini. He was 34, and it was St Valentine’s Day.

Writing his obituary, the always eloquent Gianni Mura said: ‘Marco Pantani began to die that morning of ’99, on Madonna di Campiglio. He did not accept the positive, he did not accept anything of what happened to him. Many other riders, caught up in doping affairs, stopped and restarted. Not him. He, the King of the climbs, also specialised in the descents. Down into Hell, into the artificial paradises, into hiding from public opinion, journalists, judges. He became more and more isolated, his solo attacks became rarer. And every so often, in this or that newspaper, on this or that TV show, they’d cry out: Marco come back. They were right to appeal, because cycling without Pantani was, and is, a soup with absolutely no flavour. It’s a stage without a leading man, full of actors willing but unable to give a jolt to the heart of the public. Pantani was able to do that very well, it was his great specialty. Pantani on the climbs was the equivalent of an acrobat without a net. A ritual, with almost mystical rhythms. He was like a samurai. Leaving the others destroyed.’