There were very few races that I was part of that I would call genuinely special. But the Giro d’Italia was one of them.
I had always known that Italians were passionate about the sport of cycling, but it took becoming a professional in an Italian team to realise just how much cycling suited the Italian culture, and how much racing in Italy suited me. The Italian style of racing is dictated by so much more than the race routes and the riders themselves. It is a culmination of geography, history, aesthetics, passion, celebrity and that deep-seated Italian desire to see something beautiful. The races in Italy work so well because they pander to what the public want – they want a spectacle, and they want something to talk about. The race routes never follow common sense: why would you if you could deviate to take in a climb with a picturesque backdrop, or go past a historic chapel? The racing keeps the riders on their toes, and in touch with the history of the sport. There are no races that see riders slog it out for hours on end until the last man standing slumps across the line. Italian races are tailored in the same way that Italians like to tailor everything: perfectly designed to get the very best out of the riders and the environment. The race routes take into account what the weather will be doing and where the sunlight will fall. It’s no accident that the bookend races of the Italian season – Milan–San Remo and Lombardia – have such beautifully lit finishes; the spring sunlight bathes the finish of the first, and the autumn light fades luxuriantly on the last. And it isn’t just aesthetics that the Italians do so well. The Italian races are also designed to suit the cunning mind. In Italy it is never enough just to be strong, like it is in Belgium and northern France, where an ability to bang your head against the freezing wind driving in from the sea can be all you need. In Italy the racing is designed so you have to choose your perfect moment; it requires timing, finesse and an attention to detail to create something brilliant. It is the art of cycling, the balance of perfection.
You only had to glance at me to see my physical frame wasn’t suited to taking repeated batterings, but in Italy, where the mind came into play to make every effort count, I was in my element. The Giro is the jewel in the crown of Italian cycling, and from my first days living in Italy I couldn’t help but feel its influence and importance. It played a pivotal part in where I was, what I was doing and who I was trying to become. Once I was in Italy the Giro was forever on my mind.
The thing about Italians is they love to talk. They love to talk about anything, but much in line with their Mediterranean cousins in Greece and Spain they love to debate. In Italian the word is polemica – it is what keeps bars in business, cafés bustling, and it is what makes cycling, along with football and politics, so important. The drama and aesthetic beauty set against the titanic physical struggle of cycling make it the perfect subject matter for this kind of debate. In Italy, while one-day races might provide reasons for a good debate for a day or two at best, the real winner is the Giro. It provides one whole month of conversation and argument, and the newspapers and television stations delight in fuelling the conversation – they exist purely to stoke the fire of debate.
By the time I started the race for the first time in 2003 I had been living in Italy for three years, and the Giro, being a reflection of all things Italian, helped me understand the people and the country I was living in. It was no real surprise that the Giro got the best out of me over the years, and would ultimately be the race that turned me from a young rider with potential into a polished and highly respected pro, with a reputation that would take me to a new level.
• • •
There were only six short months between my first three-week stage race, the 2002 Vuelta a España, and my first Giro, but the changes within myself as a cyclist, physically and mentally, were very significant. In September of 2002 I had been ill prepared and petrified of the Vuelta, but by the time I was getting ready to take to the start of the Giro the following May I had no fear at all of what was ahead.
My preparation for the Giro began in early April, after I rode strongly in the Coppi Bartali stage race. The race itself was fairly uneventful, and my De Nardi team was less than impressive, but I made my presence felt amongst the riders and staff. It was my first opportunity to really demonstrate to the team that I knew what I was doing in a stage race. Being in late March, the unpredictable weather meant the riders constantly needed to pick up or drop off rain jackets and gloves, and be handed up some warm tea in a bidon. I was always first back to the car, staying in contact with Honchar and making sure that the communication lines between the manager and the riders ran smoothly. I had no ambition to win whatsoever, but I had made myself an integral part of the team. Everyone likes the guy who passes them a piece of chocolate and a warm drink on a freezing stage. Those things make all the difference, and being the man who seemed to make it all happen I was making a difference.
In a cycling team you can usually tell quite quickly who will make the grade or not: cliques form, and I was good at getting inside them. That year it had become my obsession to find the right configuration of riders and elements, to be in the right place to show my wares. De Nardi were a small team, so I had to be sure that I could make it into the very biggest races to be able to move on to a bigger outfit. Being one of the very few foreigners in an Italian team (and literally the last man to get a contract) prepared me for the shit fight that was about to commence to get myself into the squad for the team’s most important race of the season. My performances in the spring were determined and considered and my hard work paid off with my early selection for the Giro. But, unlike with the previous year’s Vuelta, coming to the Giro I was allowed the luxury of adequate time to prepare.
My final rides with the team in the build-up races allowed me to feel even more relaxed. In 2003 there were no obligations for the organisers to invite the best twenty teams in the world – that came later with the introduction of the Pro Tour in 2005. Instead, the organisers still invited a lot of the small Italian teams ahead of bigger foreign teams. This meant that going into the 2003 Giro I knew my competition well – 90 per cent of the field were made up of the riders I had been racing with since the Italian season had started in February. I knew the level of competition, I knew who the protagonists were likely to be and how fast the majority of riders in my position could possibly ride. I also, crucially perhaps, knew I could last the distance in a three-week race. Finishing the Vuelta had taught me how my body would react to the effort of twenty-one days of racing, and how I had to deal with the task mentally. I was ready.
The 2003 Giro started in the south of Italy, and that in itself was an education. There are almost no races in the Italian calendar in that part of the country, so when I first arrived there I could smell the change. As you head south in Italy the country seems to downgrade metre by metre; the asphalt gets worse, the landscape changes, and the atmosphere in and around the race is completely different. I was learning about the country, but it wasn’t always good things that I saw.
The start that year was down in Lecce. The day before the race, on our short pre-race ride, the team stopped for a natural break, and looking out to sea I saw a boat out off the coast that looked like a trawler. Just for the sake of making conversation I asked an old local guy, sat on a bench with his back to the sea and an air of utter indifference to the world, what they were doing. ‘Are they fishing?’ I asked. Almost without looking up, he said, ‘No, they are pulling out a dead body from the sea.’ It wasn’t exciting; it was frightening, and quite threatening. That same night after dinner we went for the passegiata (a short walk after dinner that is customary in Italy, and Italian teams) and as we meandered down the pedestrianised street a couple came walking in the other direction. The whole team was there, and we were all chatting amongst ourselves, but as we passed the couple one of our guys turned around to say something to the rider behind him. As he turned, the boyfriend from the couple, who had been looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was looking at his bird, assumed that one of our number was checking her out. Two minutes later the same guy came tearing back down the street with all of his friends on scooters and threatened to shoot us. It might have been an idle threat and a display of childish machismo, but the thing that really disturbed me was the fact we were in the middle of a busy pedestrian street and nobody said a thing.
It was hard to really feel safe at all in the south of Italy, even when I was racing. The people in the south behaved very differently by the side of the road. There would be millions of them, and they loved the Giro, but they had absolutely no respect for the athletes. Kids would push each other in front of the race for a joke, and dogs would run out into the pack. On a climb somewhere down in the south a spectator stole my sunglasses from my face while I was racing, and I wasn’t even out the back going slowly – I was right in the action! The funny thing was that they were prescription lenses, and I was half expecting him to come back another year and say, ‘Here, have your fucking glasses back, they keep giving me a headache …’
It all went well for me to begin with: in the first week I could feel I that I was able to be involved with the racing and that I was no longer just a spectator like I’d been in the Vuelta. The importance of the Giro had infected me, and at the first mountain stage to Terminillo I committed my first cardinal sin as a domestique. It is a unique moment in my career, but on that climb I allowed my heart to rule my head – I completely forgot myself – and I dropped my leader. The stage had started in Avezzano, right in the middle of the country, and the route was practically flat until we hit the final climb to the ski station at Terminillo. This final ascent was a relatively ‘small’ mountain in comparison with the rest of the race, gaining only 600 m of altitude in 14 km, but when we hit the lower slopes and began the ascent the whole race suddenly went to pieces. Gilberto Simoni’s Saeco team drove hard at the front, and very quickly people were in a lot of trouble. Riders started cracking all around me, and letting go of the wheels of the leaders. One of the first to go was Aitor González, the rider who had won the Vuelta only a few months previously. Seeing González go backwards was a real kick – knowing how much he had made me suffer in the Vuelta. As the crowds thickened and the group continued to whittle down, I felt like I was finally getting a whiff of the Giro itself. My lungs burned but the Italian voice in my head kept on, ‘Tieni duro, tieni duro.’ (‘Hold firm, hold firm.’) I held tight near the front, incredulous as favourite after favourite seemed to fold and disappear from the group. The thrill of holding on overrode the pain. I found myself in a group with two of the biggest Italian stars of the time, Francseco Casagrande and Marco Pantani. There were ten riders in front of us with 3 km to go. I had finished 109th at my first Vuelta, and now I was amongst the top twenty riders in the Giro. It wasn’t where I was used to riding at all, and what felt stranger was that I was doing it so … so easily. After years of suffering in the races there was a momentary flicker of what might have been. Perhaps it was ignited by the passion that the race brings out in people, or perhaps by my desire to make my own history in that great race.
Either way, in an instant the team car shot up alongside us and I saw Stanga’s puce head sticking out of the window screaming at me to stop. Overcome by emotion and excitement I had completely forgotten that Honchar had been dropped and now, Stanga told me furiously, he was a minute and a half behind. My excitement switched to despair. I had fucked up. I had broken one of the rules of my job: I had left my leader. I instantly sat up in the group and watched the race ride away from me. I rolled forward, turning one pedal at a time, barely moving quickly enough to keep the bike’s momentum. Riders who were still racing passed me in ones and twos before Honchar eventually arrived and I quickly got back to speed and towed him to the finish. I ended up crossing the line in 24th place, 3 minutes 46 seconds behind the winner and 2 minutes behind the group that I had to let go. On paper it was a strong ride, and the climb to Terminillo certainly proved to me that I was capable of performing at that level, but as I rolled across the line I was utterly dejected. I’d had no intention of dropping my team leader, but I had become wrapped up in the racing. In my mind it was unforgivable for a domestique to behave this way.
Throughout my career people approached me and questioned me: ‘You could have finished in the top twenty in the Giro. Why didn’t you?’ It’s what people don’t understand about a domestique. I am sure if I could have used all my energies I could often have finished much higher in many races; there were countless occasions when I deliberately slowed to wait for my leader, or simply because I no longer had to make an effort. I was paid to do a job, and that job wasn’t to finish in the top twenty. I was paid to help a rider who could finish on the podium, even if, on occasion, I was stronger on the day. I felt I had flirted with the passion of the Giro that day, but I vowed never to make that mistake again.
The following two stages across Tuscany were pan-flat and allowed me to go about my business without any issues, while Italian cycling celebrated Mario Cipollini’s record 41st and 42nd stage wins in the Giro. Cipollini was adored in Italy: he was a celebrity, and he had flair. For the Italians, these were things that drove the common man wild with delight. Italians love celebrity, and ‘Il Re Leone’ was one such star who kept the excitement of the race alive. In those days the flat stages were the Cipollini show, from start to finish. A Cipollini win was a win for the race, and a win for Italy. More than just a victory, Cipollini was in charge of the bunch, and, as such, he was an important figure in my working day. When the peloton had a patron like Cipo calling the shots everything was that bit more relaxed. On a flat stage you would know what was going to happen: whether riders would be attacking like mad all day, if anyone would attack in the feed zone, or if a rider wanted to ride through his village in front of the race … you just had to go and ask Cipo, and if he said yes there would be no problem. In Italy Cipollini went beyond cycling, and it wasn’t a matter of fear, but of respect amongst the riders, that allowed him to take charge of the group. For me it was ideal: I knew that I could switch off on ‘his’ stages because the race would be ridden in a certain way. Over three weeks days like these were invaluable – days that I could allow my body a rest, minimising the damage, and let my mind have a few moments to itself.
When the race returned to the mountains in the following days, however, things didn’t go so well. The stage from Montecatini to Faenza turned out to be the decisive stage of the race as Gilberto Simoni made his move for the maglia rosa. I had covered an early break of sixteen riders to make sure we were represented in the front. After building up a decent lead the group was quite content to be tapping along, but when we reached 40 km to the finish news started coming in from our team manager that Simoni had launched an unexpected move and was attempting to leapfrog across to his teammate Leonardo Bertagnolli, who was with us in the break. All of a sudden the riders in the break started to panic. Before Simoni could get across on the penultimate climb of the day, riders started attacking all over the place to create a gap. The group went over the summit lined out at full bore and started hammering down the steep descent to Faenza.
Not being able to accelerate quick enough at the top of the climb meant that I had to make up ground on the descent. As the leaders sped down the hill ever faster, I started having to take more risks to stay on the wheel. Coming in to a sharp right-hand bend I hit a stretch of rough asphalt and it threw my back wheel into the air: in that moment I grabbed the brake to try to lose some speed to make the corner, but with no contact between my wheel and the road I didn’t decelerate at all. I missed the corner completely and smashed into the guardrail. I was thrown into the air and I landed right on the rail, thumping the steel barrier hard with the small of my back. I had taken a beating from an iron girder. I leapt up in agony and hobbled around the side of the road as rider after rider shot past me, yelling to the riders behind them to watch out as they saw me. Their screeching brakes yelped out in surprise. As I stood still feeling the initial effects of the blow I saw our light blue team car pull up and the concerned face of Stanga came rushing towards me.
‘Cazzo, Charly, stai bene? Are you OK?’
‘No fuck. I landed on the fucking barrier. Porca miseria!’
‘Can you get to the finish?’
I winced and nodded, ‘Si.’
Even in the agony I had known I had to try. Stanga was in a rush to get back to Honchar, and once the mechanic had checked my bike they leapt into the car and sped off down the mountain. There were still 30 km to ride, but I convinced myself I could do it. I slowly set off down the hill. As the adrenaline wore off I felt the swelling on my back increase, and every single second I was on the bike became agonising. Group after group of riders passed me, until eventually I was joined by three of my teammates, Guiseppe Palumbo, Michele Gobbi and Leonardo Zanotti. Zanotti was an ex-mountain biker and was in his first Giro too. He was a really nice kid and he seemed upset to see me in so much difficulty. He organised the three of them to take it in turns to help push me along as much as they could. I couldn’t sit on the saddle properly, and I couldn’t stand either. I was so twisted I had to unclip my foot every few pedal revolutions to ease my back. I was in tears, but I knew that I had to finish. There was always a chance that I could get better by the next day. I hung on, pedalling with the assistance from my teammates and then stretching out my back every few hundred metres, making increasingly slow progress until we eventually crossed the finish line, 17 minutes behind the winner.
I crossed the line sobbing in agony and my soigneur carried me into a team car and drove me (still dressed in my sweaty racing kit) through the chaotic Italian traffic to a local hospital. My back was ballooning, but after several X-rays it was clear that nothing was broken. I so badly wanted to continue the race that I managed to persuade the doctors to syringe out the excess fluid from my back while I lay face down in a hospital bed. It was a process that had to be repeated by our team doctor for the next five nights of the race. From then on the race became a matter of endurance. I wanted to finish, and I wanted to do my job, but I wasn’t the same bike rider again. I was so desperate not to be seen as troublesome or as a burden on the team that I suffered in silence. I was still lacking power in my left leg from the skewed position I had adopted on the bike to accommodate the pain in my back. In a way, my disappointment helped me endure the pain.
• • •
That 2003 Giro was also the last that the capricious Italian legend Marco Pantani would ride, and before I made it to Milan I would witness my own little piece of Giro history. Like Cipollini, Pantani was a superstar in Italy. He was quirky and passionate, and he defied the laws of convention. He had been a Giro winner, and the public, who saw in him everything they wanted from the sport, adored him. But by 2003 he had become a sad figure, adored by everyone it seemed bar himself. His problems evidently ran deep, and there was a sense that the end – at least in a cycling sense – was nigh.
On stage 19 I saw with my own eyes the last attack of ‘Il Pirata’ on the road to Cascata del Toce. Pantani was revered for his attacking style and his last big move was pumped up in the Italian press to be a huge event, the ‘devil may care’ stuff his legend was made of. The reality, like a lot of cycling, was quite sad. It was a token attack, really. He was tr ying to do something, and the bunch let him go out of respect – you could almost see the embarrassed domestiques, who could so easily have covered the move, looking the other way so they didn’t have to feel responsible for chasing him. He was Pantani, though, and he was allowed a bit of leeway before the real race got underway behind, and the strongest rode straight past him.
In truth, by 2003 Pantani was long past his best. He had never really recovered from the high haematocrit reading that forced him out of the 1999 Giro. It was undeniable that he was a champion cyclist, but he was also a fragile guy, with a huge ego and a coke habit. In the peloton you see riders as people – people with a great deal of talent, but people all the same. Outside of the peloton (and especially in Italy) these legends get blown up in the public’s mind so much that they can’t handle it in the end. The curse of celebrity, no less. Sadly, nearly a year after that Giro, Pantani would tragically be found dead in a Rimini hotel room. In the Giro of 2003 he must already have been in a pretty dark place, as he was incredibly distant and the slightest of things could set him off on a rant. My lasting impression of Pantani came on stage 18 of that Giro in the Alps. The stage went over the Colle di Sampeyre; it was a long climb, and, as it has a tendency to do in the Giro in May, the weather turned bad. We started the climb in rain, and slowly made our way through sleet, and then into driving snow by the time we reached the summit. The pressure had been on and the race had slowly fallen to pieces behind the leaders. I found myself climbing alone up to Pantani. The Simoni group had dropped him, and as soon as I had caught him I saw that he was fucked. He was creeping along in the darkness, completely surrounded by the television cameras that followed his every move, no matter how undignified it made him look. I wasn’t a big fan of the man, but I respected him, and I knew that he was something special. I hated seeing his suffering, and the desperation of the cameras to capture every pedal stroke of his defeat. I barged past the cameras and gave him my wheel; it was not in my interest at all, but I was compelled to help the guy. I rode the final stretch to the top of the climb with him, doing what I could to slowly increase the pace and reduce our gap to the front. He stayed millimetres behind me as we began the descent, but after my crash earlier in the race I just didn’t have the nerve to go that fast. My lines into the corners were atrocious and I crept around the first two soaking wet bends way too timidly for Pantani’s liking. Suddenly, a torrent of abuse came flooding from behind: he was livid, he was yelling and swearing and suggesting in no uncertain terms that perhaps cycling wasn’t the vocation I should have chosen. I couldn’t believe it. I had just gone out of my way to help the guy, and he had turned on me.
I felt belittled, humiliated. I was in the presence of a legend, and he was calling me a piece of fucking shit. I let him past on the next straight and he shot straight by me and disappeared into the murk. It wasn’t long until I saw him again. He was going so fast that when I came round the next corner he was there, still swearing, laid in a ditch at the side of the road. Out of rage and frustration he had gone way too fast and crashed pretty heavily on the corner. He managed to finish the stage, and eventually the race, but that was pretty much the end for him.
• • •
After my first Giro I had plenty to think about. Honchar finished in eighth place overall, which was a respectable ride and reflected well on the team that had helped him. I continued to live and race in Italy throughout the rest of 2003, and the more that I considered the race in context with the people and the country, the more I understood it. The psychology of doing well at the Giro – as far as I could tell – was that you had to become a little bit Italian to be able to perform at your best. As a rider, you had to be able to deal with the unexpected, to be relaxed and go with the flow, whatever that might be.