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

by McGann, Carol

  Normally men like Simoni and Cunego are licking their chops at the prospect of racing in the high mountains and seizing control of the race. Not this year. Basso had broken them and no one was speaking of taking the race from a rider who seemed to grow stronger every day. Journalists were beginning to compare Basso to Lance Armstrong in both his dominating style and the high pedaling cadence he employed in the mountains.

  Stage sixteen finished at the top of Monte Bondone. At the stage’s start, Basso’s CSC team rode moderate tempo at the front of the peloton, letting non-contenders test their legs in escape attempts. As the pack started the climb, CSC increased the intensity of their efforts, leaving a trail of dropped riders. Halfway up Piepoli smashed the peloton with a hard attack. Instantly only ten were left and none of them were Savoldelli, Di Luca or Cunego. Simoni, still with some fight left in him, thought there were still too many left and had Piepoli bash the maglia rosa group again. Now it was six.

  For a third time Piepoli went, this time with the intention of launching Simoni. Simoni went but Basso, the only rider with the horsepower to stay with Simoni, was vigilant and made staying with the two-time Giro winner look like child’s play. And then Basso was gone. By the finish, the gap to Simoni had grown to 86 seconds. Basso had ridden some of the best riders in the world off his wheel with unbelievable ease.

  The General Classification: 1. Ivan Basso

  2. José Gutiérrez @ 5 minutes 24 seconds

  3. Paolo Savoldelli @ 9 minutes 17 seconds

  4. Gilberto Simoni @ 9 minutes 34 seconds

  While the racers were turning themselves inside out on Monte Bondone, far away in Spain an arrest was occurring that would have far-ranging consequences for professional cycling. Manolo Saiz, director of the Spanish Liberty Seguros team, was arrested with a briefcase full of cash and bags of blood, a combination that’s hard for any cycling team director to explain away. We’ll come back to Señor Saiz and his friends later.

  Stage seventeen was planned to be a showpiece stage. After the previous year’s success using the unpaved Finestre, the 2006 edition included a hilltop finish at the Plan de Corones with its final unpaved section of 24 percent gradient.

  Fans and riders had been anticipating this stage for months but when morning came they were greeted with reports of snow falling on the Dolomite mountaintops. The riders staged a short strike, delaying the day’s start until the management agreed to shorten the stage. The planned crossing of the technical and narrow Passo delle Erbe, probably dangerous in bad weather, was eliminated. As the weather worsened, the finish was moved five kilometers down the mountain to the crest of the Passo di Furcia, removing the dirt road and its super-steep slope. Not all the riders were pleased with the compassionate alteration of the route. Knowing that Basso descended poorly, some thought the possibly muddy and dangerous conditions were ideal for putting it to the unstoppable Pink Jersey.

  On the final ascent Pérez-Cuapio was feeling good and subjected the small leading group to repeated attacks. This was perfect for Piepoli who again had the freedom to ride for a stage win. He spun up the road in the final kilometers, taking Basso with him. Near the end Piepoli again jumped and left Basso to ride away from the others in the freezing, miserable weather.

  The peloton was whipped, and it showed in the way they rode stage nineteen, il tappone, that had some the Dolomites best-known climbs: the Staulanza, Marmolada, Pordoi and a hilltop finish at the top of the San Pellegrino.

  Early on, a break with Di Luca, Gárate, Jens Voigt, and Emanuele Sella, among others, was allowed to roll off the front. Normally this would be considered an intolerable combination of talent that would be run down. That didn’t happen. A listless chase ensued while the mountains slowly ground most of the escaping riders into dust. Gárate and Voigt survived, and coming to the finish Voigt, ever the gentleman, waved his breakaway companion off and wished him well in his approaching stage victory. Voigt said that since he had not contributed to the break he had no business trying to win the stage. Simoni and Basso extricated themselves from the peloton on the final ascent and finished together. The others dribbled in, conceding still more time to the invincible Basso.

  Barring misfortune, the standings showed Basso had the race in the bag: 1. Ivan Basso

  2. José Gutiérrez @ 6 minutes 7 seconds

  3. Gilberto Simoni @ 10 minutes 34 seconds

  4. Paolo Savoldelli @ 12 minutes 59 seconds

  5. Damiano Cunego @ 15 minutes 13 seconds

  No, it wasn’t over yet, after all. The penultimate stage still held the Tonale, the south face of the Gavia, the Mortirolo and a finishing climb to the city of Aprica. Basso had the Classification contenders with him as the Mortirolo began to have its expected effect upon the riders.

  First Simoni accelerated and then Basso attacked and emerged with Simoni on his wheel. The two joined forces and together went past the new Marco Pantani memorial on their way to the summit. On the descent of the Mortirolo, Basso was again cautious. Simoni, by far the better descender, said Basso had asked him to stay with him on the descent, which he did. They began the final climb to Aprica together. As they got closer to the finish Basso started winding it up and it became too much for Simoni. Basso came in alone holding a picture of his newborn son, whom he had not yet seen. Simoni followed, 77 seconds behind. Gutiérrez and Cunego finished about three minutes behind Basso. The rest of the riders had been humiliated. Savoldelli and Piepoli, the next best, were over six minutes behind Basso.

  Simoni was livid. He said that when Basso asked him to stay with him on the descent of the Mortirolo, he assumed Basso would let him take the stage win and felt betrayed. It turns out that when Basso had gone back to the team car and explained the situation to his director, Bjarne Riis, Riis told Basso to win the prestigious stage and that Simoni had already won lots of stages. Furthermore, winning the stage would mean valuable prize money for Basso’s gregari.

  Simoni had more to say. He had never seen anyone as strong Basso was that day, likening Basso’s performance to that of an extraterrestrial, a blunt hint at doping.

  On the final day, the still enraged Simoni had one more arrow in his polemical quiver. He accused Basso of trying to buy the stage win from him on the climb to Aprica, an accusation he later withdrew.

  And that was the 2006 Giro. At no point did Basso show the slightest weakness and also at no point did he waste any energy. It was superb performance put on by an athlete displaying extraordinary strength. Basso and Riis immediately set about planning their assault on the Tour de France. At this point, if Basso could hold his form, he looked to be a near sure thing to win the Tour.

  Final 2006 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Ivan Basso (CSC) 91 hours 33 minutes 36 seconds

  2. José Gutiérrez (Phonak) @ 9 minutes 18 seconds

  3. Gilberto Simoni (Saunier Duval-Prodir) @ 11 minutes 59 seconds

  4. Damiano Cunego (Lampre-Fondital) @ 18 minutes 16 seconds

  5. Paolo Savoldelli (Discovery Channel) @ 19 minutes 22 seconds

  Climbers’ Competition: 1. Juan Manuel Gárate (Quick Step-Innergetic): 64 points

  2. Ivan Basso (CSC): 56

  3. Fortunato Baliani (Ceramiche Panaria-Navigare): 52

  Points Competition: 1. Paolo Bettini (Quick Step-Innergetic): 169 points

  2. Ivan Basso (CSC): 158

  3. José Gutiérrez (Phonak): 132

  Before moving on to the 2007 Giro, there is some unfinished business, that May 23 arrest of Manolo Saiz. The arrest had no immediate effect upon the Giro except to cause riders and directors to all tell the press that they had no involvement with whatever it was that was going on. The Spanish federation said that it was shocked, shocked that there were accusations of doping.

  Going into the Tour, once again the pall of a doping scandal hung over everything. After a months-long invest
igation centered on Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes involving hidden cameras, the Spanish Civil Guard had arrested five men who were accused of an assortment of doping crimes. Among the five were the aforementioned Saiz and José Ignacio Labarta, the assistant sports director of the Comunidad Valenciana squad. Immediately, the Liberty Insurance Company withdrew its sponsorship from Saiz’ team.

  The weekend before the start of the Tour is the traditional time for the National Championships, allowing the countries’ various champions to ride the Tour wearing their newly acquired national flag jerseys. On the Sunday morning of the road race championships, Spanish daily El País leaked major details about the ongoing investigation, now called Operación Puerto, showing that the riders and the teams had a deep involvement in systematized doping. The Spanish riders—as usual feeling that doping was their business and outraged at the publicity the story showered upon their illicit practices—staged a strike and refused to ride the Spanish Road Championship. The riders weren’t outraged that there were cheaters amongst them. The anger was at the publicity.

  It seemed that the second through fifth place finishers of the 2005 Tour (Armstrong, the winner, was retired) were going to return in even better form than ever and fight an extraordinary struggle to be the first post-Armstrong Tour victor. And then on the Thursday evening before the Saturday, July 1 Tour start, the Tour organization gave dossiers to the team managers, documenting the growing case against the riders involved in the Spanish doping scandal.

  The team managers and Tour organization met and decided that since the Pro Tour code of ethics said, “No team will allow a rider to compete while under investigation in any doping affair”, the riders who were part of the inquiry would have to be excluded. Ullrich was in the team bus on the way to a Friday pre-Tour presentation when he was informed of his suspension by the team. CSC director Riis had to tell Ivan Basso that he would not be able to ride the Tour.

  2007. The 2007 professional racing season did not start smoothly. First, the fight between the owners of the Grand Tours and the UCI continued. The UCI wanted to assert its control of racing while the racing organizers wanted to protect both their age-old prerogatives and profits. Two teams were victims of this war: Astana and Unibet. Both had made large commitments in both manpower and treasure to fulfill the stiff requirements of being a Pro Tour team. Yet the Grand Tour organizers refused to grant the two teams automatic entrance to their races as the UCI Pro Tour rules mandated. The organizers argued that Unibet was a gaming company and laws in many countries forbade the firm’s advertising.

  That left Unibet with its roster of powerful riders unable to race the most important races, including the Giro. To finesse the dispute in proper Italian style, Astana, now with Paolo Savoldelli, the 2002 and 2005 Giro winner (and an Italian), was granted a Giro wild-card.

  While both sides threatened to fight to the death, neither wanted to ruin the racing season. So, as they had since 2005, they both threw verbal barbs and continued business almost as usual.

  The bigger cloud hanging over racing was the unsettled allegations of Operación Puerto and the never-ending problems with dope. The 2006 Tour had been hit with yet another scandal when the winner, Floyd Landis, tested positive for synthetic testosterone. At the start of the 2007 Giro, the Tour had not yet been able to announce the winner of the 2006 Tour since Landis, aggressively asserting his innocence, was using all the appeals-process machinery at his disposal. He said that by July 2007, he had spent a million dollars fighting to keep his victory. In 2010, he gave up the fight, not only admitting that he had doped, but accusing Lance Armstrong and his team of a systematized doping program as well.

  With the exception of having been excluded from the 2006 Tour, Basso appeared to have skated past the scandal. In this writer’s opinion, the judge examining the Puerto case was trying to ignore as much of the case as he could and investigate as little as would appear seemly. He ended up shelving the investigation, saying that at the time, while it appeared that doping had occurred, nothing that had happened was against Spanish law. He also did all he could to keep authorities in other countries from examining the evidence to see if their laws had been broken.

  CONI tried to investigate Basso, but since they couldn’t get their hands on the evidence, they had to pronounce Basso able to sign for a team and ride in October, 2006. This non-exoneration clearance was all Johan Bruyneel needed to sign Basso to the Discovery team.

  The other Pro Tour teams erupted in fury because they had all agreed to avoid signing Puerto riders until the case was closed and the riders found innocent.

  The Puerto inquiry didn’t quite die. The big break came in early April 2007 when German prosecutors were able to match up Jan Ullrich’s DNA with blood bags seized from Fuentes. In late April it was revealed that an Italian prosecutor had his hands on blood bags that were thought to contain Basso’s blood. From then on, Basso’s defenses came apart. Knowing what was coming, Basso requested and was granted release from his Discovery contract.

  On May 7, 2007, faced with too much evidence, Basso confessed to being involved with Fuentes, but steadfastly refused to admit that he had ever doped. He said he had planned to dope in the 2006 Tour, but that so far, all of his wins were clean. Skeptical observers wondered why he had been paying Fuentes tens of thousands of euros since 2004. And how did he climb the Colle San Carlo so fast?

  The Giro barred the 50 or so riders implicated in the scandal from riding. This meant Tyler Hamilton, Michele Scarponi and Jorg Jaksche would not be able to start.

  The race organizers had to get a handle on the doping and not just for reasons of common decency. In the wake of the Puerto scandal the television audience for the Vuelta fell thirty percent. When Comunidad Valenciana and Liberty Seguros pulled out of the sport, they took contracts with them that were worth $20,000,000 over their lifetime. Sales of racing related books and DVDs plummeted. It was absolutely vital to the economic health of pro racing that the cheating be brought under control.

  At the end of April, former Telekom soigneur Jef D’Hont alleged that during the mid-1990s Telekom team doctors administered EPO to the riders as part of a team-wide doping program. The usual denials were given. But the wall of silence finally started to fall. Telekom riders from that era—Erik Zabel, Rolf Aldag, Brian Holm, and Udo Bölts—came forward and confessed. They said that with the pressure to beat other presumably doped riders, they had to use the needle or risk losing their jobs.

  On Friday, May 25 (while the 2007 Giro was being raced), 1996 Tour de France winner and CSC team owner Bjarne Riis held a press conference and came clean. The man who had the nickname of “Mr. 60 percent” for his rumored high hematocrit, admitted that he had used EPO, hormones and cortisone in his campaign to win the Tour. D’Hont said that Riis had run his hematocrit up to 64 percent. Riis’ incredible dominance in the 1996 Tour now became understandable.

  Riis’ confession left an important question unanswered. How could Riis, famous for his hands-on, close and careful management of his riders, not know about Basso’s relationship with Fuentes and not wonder about Basso’s extraordinary performance in the 2006 Giro, especially in light of his own dope-fueled performances?

  The race that was announced in Milan, as usual, favored the specialist climbers with some challenging ascents including Monte Zoncolan and Tre Cime di Lavaredo.

  In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s birth, the Giro used several of the stages to celebrate the great man’s place in Italian history. The presentation of the teams was to be aboard the aircraft carrier Garibaldi and the first stage was to start on Caprera, an island next to Sardinia and Garibaldi’s burial place. The name of the master guide book handed out to the Giro teams and the press each year, by the way, is the Garibaldi.

  The race route began with a team time trial on Caprera, followed by three stages on Sardinia, the Giro’s first visit there in sixteen years. Afte
r crossing to Salerno for the start of stage four, the race headed directly north. From about stage twelve, with its inclusion of the Izoard climb, the race would be between the mountain goats.

  As the highest-placed rider from the 2006 Giro starting the 2007 edition, Gilberto Simoni, at 35 years old, was the odds-on favorite. He again found himself in the uncomfortable position of having a gifted young teammate who could steal the team leadership. Riccardo Riccò showed both confidence and power in the spring, having won two stages and the points classification in Tirreno–Adriatico.

  The race started with that team time trial. The course’s serpentine roads and high winds caused several teams to use normal road bikes instead of time trial machines. There were several crashes, the most notable being Popovych, who fell just before the end of the stage. While he suffered no serious injury, his team was forced to wait for him and lost almost a minute.

  Di Luca’s Liquigas team won the stage. Young Enrico Gasparotto was the first of his team to cross the line, earning him the first maglia rosa. Di Luca was visibly angry as the team finished, screaming at Gasparotto who was supposed to ease up to let his leader be first. The press, enjoying the polemica, tried to drive a wedge between Gasparotto, who at first said it was the team’s intention to let him have the lead, and Di Luca, who publicly shrugged the entire thing off.