by Carol McGann
The standings: 1. Gilberto Simoni
2. Stefano Garzelli @ 7 minutes 8 seconds
3. Yaroslav Popovych @ 7 minutes 19 seconds
4. Andrea Noè @ 9 minutes 19 seconds
5. Georg Totschnig @ 9 minutes 29 seconds
There was one mountain stage left, a trip due north just west of Milan and into the Alps with a hilltop finish on the Cascata del Toce. During the last kilometers of the final ascent, Garzelli was dropped from the group of climbers that remained: Simoni, Pellizotti, Frigo, Pantani and Belli. Now a sight occurred that warmed the hearts of the tifosi. Out of the saddle, in his trademark style with his hands on the drops, Pantani took off. A Pantani attack on a mountain road is taken lightly only by the foolhardy. Simoni immediately went after him. Pantani went again, and again Simoni closed the gap. Now Pellizotti jumped and Simoni made the decisive counter-attack. No one could go with the soaring maglia rosa and Simoni won his third stage while Garzelli kept his second place over Popovych by two seconds. Pantani’s fans were thrilled, it seemed almost like 1998 again.
That left only the final time trial. Simoni’s lead was impregnable but Garzelli’s two-second lead over Popovych was tissue paper. Garzelli defended his place and extended his lead by three more seconds.
There can be no doubt that the best rider won the race. Simoni said that unlike 2001 when he was scrambling for seconds at every opportunity, this victory was the result of several set pieces that had been planned well in advance.
Final 2003 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Gilberto Simoni (Saeco) 89 hours 32 minutes 9 seconds
2. Stefano Garzelli (Vini Caldirola-So.Di) @ 7 minutes 6 seconds
3. Yaroslav Popovych (Landbouwkrediet-Colnago) @ 7 minutes 11 seconds
4. Andrea Noè (Alessio) @ 9 minutes 24 seconds
14. Marco Pantani (Mercatone Uno-Scanavino) @ 26 minutes 15 seconds
Climbers’ Competition: 1. Freddy González (Colombia-Selle Italia): 100 points
2. Gilberto Simoni (Saeco): 78
3. Constantino Zaballa (Kelme-Costa Blanca): 65
Points Competition: 1. Gilberto Simoni (Saeco): 154 points
2. Stefano Garzelli (Vini Caldirola-So.Di): 154 (although Garzelli was tied on points Simoni won more stages)
3. Jan Svorada (Lampre): 137
In the final days of the Giro, as he was beginning to find his form, Pantani started wondering about riding the Tour and testing his abilities against Armstrong. Mercatone Uno had been built around him and almost entirely depended upon him for victories and was thus low in the team standings and could not get an invitation to the Tour. Inquiries were made on Pantani’s behalf to see if he might be allowed to ride the Tour on Jan Ullrich’s Bianchi team. Initially Bianchi said no because the team already had two classification riders and there was no room for him. An attempt was made to find a place for Pantani on Garzelli’s Vini Caldirola squad.
Both Bianchi and Vini Caldirola eventually said they would accept the 1998 Tour winner in their ranks. The UCI and the Tour organization also agreed to it. But then, as the negotiations dragged on, Pantani hung up his bike and decided that as a former winner he should not be riding as some sort of special guest. The troubled rider effectively said no to the Tour. As this play was going on, Pantani again descended into a round of cocaine abuse.
With difficulty he was talked into checking into an Italian clinic for treatment of addiction. When the media found he was at the clinic, he left and released a letter to his fans saying that in his present state he was unable to race and would return to the sport when he had overcome his troubles. Meanwhile, the inquiry into his disqualification from the 1999 Giro finally came to a conclusion. Although there was clear evidence showing he was doped, he was found to be innocent of any crime against then-existing Italian law. The 2003 Giro was Pantani’s last race. In February of 2004 he was found in a hotel in Rimini, dead of a cocaine overdose.
On November 23, 2003, Judge Franca Oliva acquitted Francesco Conconi of the doping charges that had been pending against him for so long. The ruling said that if sporting fraud were not a crime at the time of the offense, which it wasn’t, Conconi could not be guilty of a crime of sporting fraud. Moreover, there was no specific evidence proving Conconi had been personally involved with helping riders break any drug laws.
In late March of 2004, Oliva issued a 44-page report on the lengthy Conconi investigation and prosecution. While Conconi and his assistants weren’t legally guilty of a crime, Oliva stated unequivocally that they were morally guilty of helping athletes dope. The report was damning in its list of Conconi clients who had exhibited highly volatile hematocrit values. Hematologists hired by the Italian government said these highly variable blood values could be assumed to show EPO use. Among the riders the report said had used EPO were Giro/Tour/World Champion Stephen Roche, Marco Pantani, Claudio Chiappucci, Evgeni Berzin, Ivan Gotti, Gianni Bugno and Piotr Ugrumov. This was a Who’s Who of cycling in the 1990s and showed how deeply the fangs of organized doping had sunk into professional cycling.
Drugs change the sport. We like athletic competitions to be a test of an athlete’s physical gifts honed through endless hours of training and well as his mental toughness and tactical skills. But bodies respond differently to drugs and some athletes, who would otherwise have to fight as one of many near equals, become magnificent champions when doped. Witness Bjarne Riis’ sudden and almost effortless rise from domestique to winner of the Tour de France. Pantani was one such (un)lucky man. He had been the amateur Giro champion (there is reason now to believe even that victory may have been purchased with dope) and hence was a man with amazing physical gifts. With the addition of cutting edge drugs, in 1998 and 1999 he was the finest rider on Earth.
Was he a bad guy? Was he a hero? I think he was neither. He may have been either delusional or dishonest about his own doping, but the idea that he alone was caught and humiliated when the rest of the peloton was also obviously drugged seems to be the basis of his paranoid feelings of conspiracy. I think it was Poulidor who felt that drug testing was inherently unfair because so many could evade drug controls. Most racers understand the devil’s deal of professional competition and drugs, but Pantani’s mental instabilities made tragic the consequences of being caught. One could make a strong argument that he was, above all, a tool of an unbelievably corrupt sport that saw him as a fabulous money machine.
He was pulled apart by competing interests. When he should have been given time to recover and find peace as his psychologists had counseled, others—some of whom honestly believed it would be the best way for him do deal with his mental problems—urged him to keep racing. He was too valuable to be cloistered in a clinic recovering.
All over northern Italy prosecutors harassed him. Pier Bergonzi of La Gazzetta dello Sport said there were at least seven investigations into Marco Pantani opened by various police and judicial bodies. Yes, he had misbehaved, but so had much of the professional peloton. Pantani, being Italy’s most famous sportsman, was singled out for celebrity justice. One wonders, if Pantani’s handlers had been more honest about the poor state of his mental health, would he have so unrelentingly targeted by law enforcement.
The tifosi now understand all about who Pantani was and what he did, yet they still adore him. For all his flaws, for a couple of years he was extraordinary and he did make them dream.
Chapter 6
2004–2011: Angelo Zomegnan Takes Over and the Giro Thrives
2004. The 2004 Giro was one of the most interesting in modern history because of the fascinating interplay between its two main protagonists. Compared to the two previous editions, from a sporting point of view the 2004 Giro was more like other recent editions. Instead of about 80 kilometers of time trialing, the 2004 Giro had only 59, split into a 6.9-kilometer prologue and the stage thirteen 52-kilometer individual time trial at Tri
este. The three hilltop finishes were in line with regular Giro design.
Simoni’s spring racing results didn’t give any sign that he was going to be particularly competitive. But just before the Giro, he pulled a rabbit out of his hat by taking third in the Giro del Trentino. His team director said that Simoni’s build-up was intended to be slow because Simoni planned to ride both the Giro and the Tour. He was to be the team’s undisputed Classification leader and the Saeco team would ride completely at Simoni’s service.
All of the other fine riders entered were thought to be nothing more than podium contenders: Giuliano Figueras, Wladimir Belli, Yaroslav Popovych and Franco Pellizotti. One of Simoni’s teammates, 22-year-old Damiano Cunego, was considered a somewhat remote possibility for a top three placing. That was badly underestimating the man who was victorious (over Simoni) in the Giro del Trentino while winning two stages. The young man had shown a mastery of the art of bicycle racing far beyond his years.
The prologue was run through old Genoa over a highly technical course, which Australian Bradley McGee won, snagging the year’s first Pink Jersey. Neither Garzelli nor Simoni embarrassed themselves, finishing within 11 seconds of each other, both relieved to have finished their rides safely and without major time loss. The surprise was that Simoni was the faster of the two. Moreover, Simoni’s gregario Cunego was able to beat Garzelli by a second.
From Genoa, the Giro headed south down the western side of the peninsula. In stage two, Simoni’s Saeco squad showed their confidence in Cunego’s all-around talents. Near the crest of the final hill they had Cunego take a hard pull to break up the peloton. Then, in the 21-kilometer descent to the finish they continued to keep the speed high, preventing a regrouping, although all the favorites were in the front group.
For the sprint Saeco formed a train that led Cunego out for a surprising win, considering that speedy Bradley McGee was right in the sprinter’s scrum. With the time bonus for second place, McGee regained the lead he had lost in the first stage. Cunego was now in fourth place, well ahead of Simoni and Garzelli. Simoni pronounced himself well pleased with the result and glad that Popovych, who had also joined the sprint mix, had been denied any bonus time.
Stage three, the first hilltop finish of the year, took the riders through the mountain terrain north of Lucca and Pistoia and past the Saeco espresso machine factory. On the day’s final climb, to the Corno alle Scale ski station, the Saeco squad hit the front hard, some of them in the big ring. With two kilometers to go the best riders were still together, so Saeco’s Eddy Mazzoleni took the pace up another notch and then Cunego exploded off the front. Then Simoni sped past Cunego for the solo stage win and the Pink Jersey. Cunego was caught by the chasers, but even after working all day as a gregario, he out-sprinted them for second place. It was early days, but so far Saeco was demonstrating complete control of the race. Garzelli lost 34 seconds, putting him slightly more than a minute behind Simoni.
The General Classification stood thus: 1. Gilberto Simoni
2. Damiano Cunego @ 13 seconds
3. Yaroslav Popovych @ 21 seconds
4. Franco Pellizotti @ 29 seconds
5. Gerhard Trampusch @ 41 seconds
The next three stages were taken over by the sprinters as the Giro wound its way south through Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. Alessandro Petacchi won two more stages, bringing his total so far for the year to three. Robbie McEwen took stage five, sandwiching himself between the extraordinary Italian’s victories. Through these high-speed flatter stages Simoni kept the maglia rosa.
Stage seven was the year’s second hilltop finish, at the Montevergine di Mercogliano, sited a bit east of Naples. While Saeco kept the speed high and did all it could to discourage attacks, no one was deterred in the slightest. A third of the way up the climb Simoni tried to get away, but Garzelli was having none of that. Giuliano Figueras launched himself up the road three times, but each time Cunego marked him. With less than two kilometers to go Simoni went again and again Garzelli was on his wheel. After a short pause, Simoni moved to the front and just rode hard. With a half-kilometer to go, out from behind Simoni, Cunego blasted away and took the stage win, the twenty-second time bonus and the maglia rosa.
Simoni said that he couldn’t get away with all the other riders watching his wheel. That made a nice excuse, but Cunego didn’t win because the others weren’t policing him. He won because he simply went faster than anyone else could. He was winning hard stages with an ease reminiscent of the young Greg LeMond. Cunego voiced hope he would keep the lead for another week, before the Giro hit the high mountains, while Simoni expressed pleasure that a teammate was keeping the Pink Jersey warm for him, allowing him to race without the pressure of defending the lead.
The new General Classification: 1. Damiano Cunego
2. Gilberto Simoni @ 10 seconds
3. Franco Pellizotti @ 28 seconds
4. Yaroslav Popovych @ 31 seconds
5. Giuliano Figueras @ 52 seconds
The next day Petacchi showed how talented he was when he won stage eight, meaning that so far he had won half the year’s stages. Robbie McEwen tried to get up to Petacchi for the sprint by getting a madison-type hand sling from a teammate. He was caught by the judges and relegated.
As the Giro finished its ride across the arch of the Italian boot, American sprinter Fred Rodriguez caught Petacchi and his Fassa Bortolo team napping by jumping early and taking stage nine, taking the first Giro road stage win by an American since Andy Hampsten in 1988.
With the first rest day came a long transfer from the southernmost part of Italy up to Le Marche. Some observers noted the similarities between the Saeco of 2004 and the 1986 La Vie Claire team with young Greg LeMond and the aging master, Bernard Hinault; yet the two showed no signs of strain between them during the day-off press conference. Simoni said he was grateful Cunego had assumed the weight of the Pink Jersey. Cunego in turn, was humble and appreciative of the guidance Simoni gave him and said that some day in the future he would also like to win the Giro.
Stage eleven, finishing in Cesena, showed that while Saeco may be the strongest team in the race, their power and endurance did have limits. A capable break went off the front after about 65 kilometers and with 45 kilometers to go, on the Passo delle Siepi, neo-pro Emanuele Sella took off.
Back in the peloton, it dawned on the Saeco team that the little Sella, who was showing a heretofore-unrevealed ability, was the virtual maglia rosa, forcing the red-suited Saecos to try to put an end to this nonsense. Soon the chase group was down to fifteen, with Cunego and Simoni the only Saeco riders left, the others having been burnt up in the pursuit. Unafraid to help their own cause, the team leaders did yeoman’s work and kept Sella’s lead manageable. Even though the speed over the stage’s rolling terrain was fearsome (over 48 kilometers per hour at the 133-kilometer point), Sella managed to stay away and take the solo win. Cunego kept the Pink Jersey but the Saeco team was showing wear and tear with more than a week of racing left.
All nine Fassa Bortolo riders lined up to head for the stage nine finish in Treviso and let loose “Ale-Jet” Petacchi for another stage victory. The other sprinters had figured out that the only chance for a win was to be on Petacchi’s wheel in the final kilometer and as the Giro progressed, they grew more desperate, each stage exhibiting ever more furious and dangerous fights for his wheel. No matter how hard they tried, no one seemed to be able to get past the speedy Italian when his sprint machine was working perfectly. Stage twelve was no exception. So far Petacchi was still victorious in half the year’s stages.
Stage thirteen was the Giro’s race against the clock. It was a difficult course, technical and with a climb that had a short patch of fourteen-percent gradient. To make the ride even more challenging, before the main contenders hit the road a light rain began to fall. The racers nonetheless still used their tricky-handling but faster time trial bikes. S
imoni crashed and Garzelli, who had taken off like a rocket, had to change machines because of a broken derailleur. He never regained his rhythm and lost a half-minute. Mister Big-Gear himself, Serguei Gontchar, won the stage, but his Ukrainian compatriot Popovych got the big prize, his third place being good enough for pink.
That made for a rearranged General Classification: 1. Yaroslav Popovych
2. Serguei Gontchar @ 3 seconds
3. Bradley McGee @ 1 minute 2 seconds
4. Gilberto Simoni @ 1 minute 27 seconds
5. Franco Pellizotti @ 1 minute 32 seconds
6. Damiano Cunego @ 1 minute 48 seconds
Stage fourteen went due south through the Istrian peninsula to Pola where Petacchi made history by winning seven stages in a single Giro, equaling the postwar record of de Vlaeminck, Maertens and Saronni. Popovych stayed in pink.
Seven weren’t enough. In the last stage before the high mountains, the Fassa Bortolo team did another perfect lead-out into San Vendemiano. Now Petacchi joined the truly great. With eight stage wins in the 2004 Giro, he joined Binda (1923) and Girardengo (1929), extraordinary company. Binda’s 1927 absolute record of twelve stage wins (out of a possible fifteen that year) still looked to be safe, perhaps forever.
