The Story of the Giro d'Italia: A Year-by-Year History of the Tour of Italy, Volume 2: 1971-2011

by McGann, Carol

  About four kilometers from the summit, Heras attacked and drew Pantani. Pantani waited a few seconds before countering with a display of climbing power that was simply unbelievable, showing that no one could climb a mountain on a bike like he could. Gilberto Simoni was the first chaser in at 67 seconds, his ride confirming his promise as a coming talent in Grand Tour racing.

  Photo of Pantani

  At this point Pantani was leading in the Points, Mountains and the General Classifications. After the Alpe di Pampeago stage the General Classification was thus:

  1. Marco Pantani

  2. Paolo Savoldelli @ 3 minutes 42 seconds

  3. Ivan Gotti @ 4 minutes 53 seconds

  4. Laurent Jalabert @ 5 minutes 24 seconds

  Stage twenty was a hilltop finish at Madonna di Campiglio. Before the riders started the stage, fifteen of them were required to submit to blood tests. All were deemed clean and good, giving everyone a high degree of confidence that the Giro would not be facing any more doping troubles. It was on the final kilometers of that mountain that the real action occurred. With fifteen kilometers to go, Pantani came out of the peloton and exploded off the front. Again, the rest of the best cyclists in the world could only watch and limit their losses as best they could. The Pirate was well and truly gone. The first group came in as the day before, 67 seconds later. Pantani’s performance in this Giro so far had been absolutely masterful.

  The new General Classification: 1. Marco Pantani

  2. Paolo Savoldelli @ 5 minutes 38 seconds

  3. Ivan Gotti @ 6 minutes 12 seconds

  4. Laurent Jalabert @ 6 minutes 39 seconds

  5. Daniel Clavero @ 9 minutes 51 seconds

  The next day’s stage—number twenty one—promised only more of the same for a peloton riding under Pantani’s tyranny. Leaving from Madonna di Campiglio, where stage twenty had ended, it was to be the tappone with the Tonale, Gavia, Mortirolo, Valico di Santa Cristina and a hilltop finish at Aprica. Surely Pantani, who had so far won four stages in the Giro, would again have his way with the other riders.

  That morning in Madonna di Campiglio, Marco Pantani was awakened in his hotel room so that a blood test could be administered. His hematocrit of 52 percent resulted in his being ejected from the Giro. The effect of his squalificato was profound. The cycling world was stunned. Pantani partisans were sure that some sort of conspiracy was afoot to deny Italy’s most popular sportsman a second Giro victory. It was said that this was a giallo (yellow, an Italian idiom meaning something with dark conspiratorial undertones) case. It hit cycling fans far harder than the 1998 Festina scandal because of Pantani’s heroic image and the adoration the tifosi had for him. He had triumphed over what should have been a crippling accident and had stuck with and won the Tour de France in its deepest most troubling time. Distraught, the rest of the Mercatone Uno team packed and left the Giro as well.

  Nearly all Italians expressed disbelief that Pantani would have taken any performance enhancing drugs. Almost to a man, racers lined up to express their support for the expelled rider and a belief in the cleanliness of his bloodstream. How many of them actually believed what they were saying is difficult to know, but I suspect damn few.

  Pantani knew the night before that he was going to be subjected to a blood test in the morning. Like many pros of the era (two-thirds of the 1998 Festina squad owned battery-powered centrifuges so that they could “manage” their hematocrits) he had his own centrifuge and tested himself before going to sleep, satisfied with his 48.6 percent hematocrit. Riders who do not manipulate their blood have no need of a personal centrifuge.

  Always trying to do damage to the drug testing programs, riders and managers cynically expressed criticism over the reliability of the hematocrit test. In fact Pantani’s blood was tested twice and after it was shown to have a high hematocrit, three more tests were performed in the presence of Pantani’s team doctor and team director Giuseppe Martinelli. Averaging the five tests gave a result of 53 percent. The rules, allowing for a margin of error, require that the average be reduced a point. Thus, Pantani’s 52 percent.

  The doctors who had performed the tests on Pantani’s blood retested the samples when they returned to their hospital in Como. The Carabinieri later seized the samples and delivered them to yet another doctor for testing. The results remained unchanged. Later DNA tests were done to certify that the blood samples were indeed Pantani’s. They were.

  Pantani was distraught. When told the news he smashed out a window in his hotel room. He then quietly returned home. After a few days he held a short press conference where he forcefully asserted his complete innocence. He said that on his way home he had a blood test performed and the hematocrit reading was 48 percent, dreadfully high, but legal.

  To me the entire affair has a sense of mystery about it. We’ve seen there were standard procedures teams used to lower a rider’s hematocrit. The team knew Pantani was going to be tested in the morning. They even knew the time. Why wasn’t his hematocrit brought down before the test? The team doctor spent much of the evening and early morning before the test at a disco, which Pantani’s agent Manuela Ronchi thought strange given the importance of the coming stage. The test was administered a little after 7:30 in the morning, but the doctor, who so far has refused to discuss that day, didn’t show up until after nine (although in one statement, he said he delivered Pantani to the testers but didn’t stay while Pantani’s blood was extracted because he went to get another rider, Marco Velo). It has been asserted that without medical assistance Pantani couldn’t use the normal methods of achieving a short-term reduction in his hematocrit. Yet, on other teams, even the soigneurs knew how to put a bag of saline into a racer to get a temporary three-point reduction in a rider’s hematocrit. Willy Voet wrote it was part of pro cycling’s standard operating procedure and took about 20 minutes to do the job, which probably explains why Pantani was habitually late to his blood tests that require the rider to show up within ten minutes of being called. The conflicting accounts make it hard to understand exactly what happened that morning. But whether he didn’t think he needed help to cheat the tests, based on his previous evening’s hematocrit, or he just didn’t have a technician available, he was a goner.

  I’ve noted that Pantani’s girlfriend has described him as having a severe inferiority complex and he was later clinically diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His actions from that day at the Madonna di Campiglio and the tragic events that fill the few years left to him can be explained by those insights. Falling from the extraordinary heights to which he had risen, the most adored sports personality in Italy, to doper hounded by the law, was a descent that his fragile ego was unable to handle while his manic-depressive tendencies made his impulsive tendencies all the worse.

  The racers didn’t threaten to strike this time. Many riders were tested that day and only Pantani’s hematocrit was above the allowable level.

  With Pantani booted, the next three places in the General Classification were close together in time, close enough that the queen stage would probably decide the winner. Savoldelli was now the leader, but he refused to wear the Pink Jersey.

  After the Tonale and Gavia, the riders were together at the beginning of the Mortirolo. It was here, just as the gradient began to hurt, that Gotti made his move. Only Simoni and Heras were able to stay with him, Savoldelli and Jalabert chasing as best they could. Eventually the front trio formed a smooth working break and on the Mortirolo, Gotti didn’t look back while he led the other two all the way to the top. The crowds who had wanted to see Pantani ice his Giro victory were huge. There was a banner that summed up the profound emotion of aspiration, joy and hope Pantani made Italian cycling fans feel, “Pirata—farci sognare” (Pirate, make us dream).

  Savoldelli went over the top 3 minutes 3 seconds behind the leading trio. He went down the technical descent of the Mortirolo hell-bent on getting back on terms with the G
otti group. He caught a strong group of riders on the false flat leading to Aprica and finding their pace not to his liking, dropped them and continued his pursuit. Despite these efforts, he was never able to catch the leaders and finished 4 minutes 5 seconds back.

  Heras won the stage and improved his overall position while Simoni was, for now, up to second in the General Classification and Gotti was the new leader and winner of the 1999 Giro d’Italia. Later in the day it was announced that the times had been recalculated and Savoldelli was in second place after all, a single second ahead of Simoni.

  Gotti’s victory was not embraced by the Italian public who felt their Marco was the true winner. As Gotti was putting on his new Pink Jersey in Aprica, whistles of derision from the crowd could be heard. Gotti was correct when he said that everyone knew and competed under the same rules, one of which was that racing with a high hematocrit was grounds for disqualification. Gotti said he was racing for second place before the Pirate was sent home because he knew “Pantani is the best and strongest rider in the world.”

  Final 1999 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Ivan Gotti (Polti) 99 hours 55 minutes 56 seconds

  2. Paolo Savoldelli (Saeco-Cannondale) @ 3 minutes 35 seconds

  3. Gilberto Simoni (Ballan-Alessio) @ 3 minutes 36 seconds

  4. Laurent Jalabert (ONCE-Deutsche Bank) @ 5 minutes 16 seconds

  5. Roberto Heras (Kelme-Costa Blanca) @ 7 minutes 47 seconds

  Climbers’ Competition: 1. José Jaime González (Kelme-Costa Blanca): 61 points

  2. Mariano Piccoli (Lampre-Daikin): 45

  3. Paolo Bettini (Mapei-Quick Step): 44

  Points Competition: 1. Laurent Jalabert (ONCE-Deutsche Bank): 175 points

  2. Fabrizio Guidi (Polti): 170

  3. Massimo Strazzer (Mobilvetta -Northwave): 126

  Nothing was learned. A few days later four riders were kicked out of the Tour of Switzerland because they had high hematocrits.

  2000. The Italian government passed a law making it a crime to dope in sports. On May 5, eight days before the Giro was to begin, the great Gino Bartali passed away in his hometown of Florence. Over his career “Gino the Pious” had won the Giro three times, the climbers’ competition seven times and the Tour de France twice. The man rightly nicknamed the “Man of Iron” was one of the greatest riders in the history of the sport.

  The 83rd Giro seemed to have “climber” written all over it with 23,000 meters of elevation gain and three hilltop finishes.

  Gotti wanted to erase the stigma of what some saw as his tainted 1999 win. This view was unfair: he had been the best rider to compete within the rules. Also entered were Tonkov, Simoni, Casagrande and Pantani’s teammate Stefano Garzelli.

  And what of Pantani? He took his disqualification harder than any other racer, ever. Convinced he was the victim of a conspiracy to defraud him of the 1999 Giro, he secluded himself in his house while an army of reporters and photographers camped outside. A few days after his expulsion Pantani began his descent into addiction and by June he was a regular user of cocaine. Meanwhile, symbolizing Italy’s state of denial regarding Pantani, Italy’s Prime Minister awarded Pantani the Collar for Sporting Merit.

  During this time Pantani had stopped riding and the combination of poor condition, ruined mental state and cocaine use rendered a 1999 Tour attempt impossible. While his fellow riders and team manager were aware of his drug problems by early 2000, for years Pantani and his circle continued to hide his cocaine use from the team’s sponsors and unbelievably, the team doctor.

  A judicial investigation was launched into Pantani’s disqualification and almost simultaneously the Turin prosecutor opened an inquiry into the weird blood values technicians found when Pantani crashed in 1995. When his broken body was brought to the hospital his hematocrit was over 60 percent and Pantani was therefore potentially guilty of the crime of “sporting fraud”.

  Meanwhile in Ferrara, an investigation into the good Doctors Conconi and Ferrari had yielded a gold mine of data after computers seized at Conconi’s offices were made to spill their guts. The cream of Italian cycling was implicated in an extensive doping program, all documented with meticulous notes. Among the riders were Bugno, Chiappucci, Fondriest, Gotti, Ugrumov and Pantani. Information from the files was published in the daily La Repubblica in December and showed that Pantani’s blood had been manipulated since at least 1996.

  As in the 1998 Tour scandal, where Festina found its sales soaring as its team fell into disgrace, many of Pantani’s sponsors found the publicity windfall helped business and were eager to use him to publicize their products.

  In January of 2000 Pantani announced that the Giro and the Tour would be the centerpieces of his season. He spent part of the winter training in the Canary Islands. As the early season races drew nigh he postponed his racing start, feeling that things were not “tranquil”.

  Late in February Pantani entered and quickly retired from the Tour of Valencia. Ominously his doctor started talking about stress, saying Pantani’s mental condition was far from ideal. By late March, Pantani was still postponing his racing restart. It later turned out that he was suffering cocaine relapses that kept setting back his training. On May 12, the day before the Giro’s start, Pantani announced the he would indeed ride the Giro. Though he was titled the team captain, he would not actually be the team leader. “I am here to ride in support of my team. I am here to regain my form.” Stefano Garzelli would be Mercatone Uno’s protected Classification rider in a Giro Pantani had earlier said was “....tailor-made for Savoldelli, who in June got through the tests because his hematocrit was 49.9 percent and ended up finishing second behind Gotti.”

  Before the riders could race, they were all subjected to blood tests. One rider failed to pass, Evgeni Berzin. With too many red blood corpuscles, he wasn’t allowed to start and his team, Mobilvetta, quickly sacked him.

  The Catholic Church proclaimed 2000 a Jubilee year, so the Giro started with a 4.6-kilometer prologue bouncing over slippery cobbles starting at the Vatican and finishing in Rome.

  Czech rider Jan Hruska won, beating Paolo Savoldelli by a fraction of a second. Cipollini was only a second back, putting himself within stage-win time bonus of the Pink Jersey. Pantani finished near the bottom of the standings, 40 seconds down.

  Stage one was a short 125 kilometers south to Terracina. Cipollini gained enough time in an intermediate sprint to take the lead, but decided the final sprint was too dangerous and was content with the maglia rosa as Ivan Quaranta beat the other speedsters.

  For their stage two journey into southern Italy, cold, rainy weather greeted the racers, which seemed to have cooled their racing ardor. A seven-man group with Cristian Moreni escaped and was never seen again. A few kilometers from the end in Maddaloni, Moreni jumped away from his breakaway companions on a small hill, beating the break to the finish line by 5 seconds and the peloton by another 25, moving the lead from Cipollini to Moreni.

  Stage four, into Matera in the heel of the Italian boot, allowed Cipollini to claim his 30th stage. It wasn’t pretty because there was a substantial hill in the day’s route that should have left the Lion King gasping for air and unable to maintain contact with the peloton, but the television cameras told the dirty story. Cipollini got pushed up the hill by his gregario Mario Scirea while the judges pretended not to know about it. Furthermore, Cipollini gregario Giuseppe Calcaterra hit Freddy González in the head for attacking while Cipollini was being helped.

  With its short climb to the finish line in Peschici on the Adriatic Coast, stage five offered a first real peek at who was ready to race. Matteo Tosatto took care of business early when he won an intermediate sprint and earned enough bonus time to make him the virtual leader.

  Later, when the day’s break took off, Tosatto’s team didn’t chase; they had no plans to waste energy defending his lead when the
y knew he couldn’t take it to Milan. They were keeping their powder dry for their Classification man, Wladimir Belli. It turned out Fassa Bortolo could have their cake and eat it too when the peloton came together before the sprint, preserving Tosatto’s lead.

  The General Classification at this point: 1. Matteo Tosatto

  2. Cristian Moreni @ 3 seconds

  3. José Gutiérrez @ 14 seconds

  4. Andrea Noè @ 25 seconds

  5. Danilo Di Luca @ 31 seconds

  The next couple of stages were ridden piano, but stage eight, raced over three ranked climbs, had some great, tongue-hanging, lung-searing racing. With about 50 kilometers to go, a small group containing Gutiérrez got clear and was joined by a trio containing Di Luca. The chase was on (I’m astonished that such a high quality group was allowed to get away) and after some hard-driving riding, the breakaway emerged in Prato 49 seconds ahead of the peloton, making Gutiérrez the new leader.

  That was just a warm-up. The next day had a hilltop finish at Abetone, but before they did that ascent, the riders had to get over the San Pellegrino where the peloton came apart. The better riders each took a pull and the speed kept increasing. Pantani, not unexpectedly, was shelled. His ever-vigilant team surrounded him and did their duty, shepherding the out-of-form superstar to the finish.

  Further up the hill Francesco Casagrande took his turn applying the pressure and only Danilo Di Luca could stay with him. Casagrande put the gas pedal down a little closer to the floor and still Di Luca clung to his wheel. Casagrande kept going harder and harder until finally Di Luca couldn’t take it, letting Casagrande go. A chase group of the rest of the best formed: Simoni, Tonkov, Gotti, Frigo, Belli, Di Luca, Noè and Garzelli. Casagrande was spitting out watts as if the race would end tomorrow and held his lead to the end, beating the Garzelli-lead group by 1 minute 39 seconds. Casagrande was the maglia rosa. It was a gutsy move and an impressive display of authority.