Marco Pantani – Every Climber in One
Exclusive extract from 'Climbers: Pain, panache and polka dots in cycling’s greatest arenas' by Peter Cossins
With the 2024 Tour de France starting in Italy, we’ve teamed up with author Peter Cossins to bring you this extract from his book ‘Climbers: Pain, panache and polka dots in cycling’s greatest arenas ’. It’s 26 years since Italian rider Marco Pantani won the Tour de France, and this extract focuses on the rider’s exploits on the road to Les Deux Alpes in 1998.
Pantani, a slight and fragile figure who looked like the archetypal underdog, became a lightning rod for this acclamation because he was the incarnation of almost all of the qualities that we revere in climbers. He had the perfect style of Gaul, the grace of Bahamontes, the ballsiness of Fuente and Bartali, the class and killer instinct of Coppi, the tendency for theatre of Vietto, the diminutive stature and vulnerability of Trueba and Jiménez. He was the epitome of sprezzatura and fired by duende, which drew thrilling performances from him, but also led him into the abyss and, ultimately, a tragically premature and lonely death.
All these attributes were displayed on what would be the defining victory of his career at Les Deux Alpes. Run in driving rain and in chilling temperatures, the stage from Grenoble crossed the Croix de Fer and Télégraphe passes to reach the critical ascent of the Col du Galibier. Climbing from the ski station of Valloire, the road runs due south to Plan Lachat, where it switches back over the Valloirette river and starts to rise more steeply towards the 2,642-metre summit, still eight kilometres away.
With almost two of these completed, Luc Leblanc attacks, Adriano De Zan, who had just been highlighting the presence of fans from all over Italy on the climb, declaring on RAI’s coverage, ‘Attention, this is a very important moment…’ His co-commentator, ex-pro Davide Cassani, concurs, describing how, ‘Pantani has his hands on the drops, Ullrich keeps turning to look at him, this could be a good place to attack…’ As if prompted by Cassani’s words, Pantani accelerates away, instantly forging a gap. Ten seconds into his offensive, he pauses in mid-pedal stroke and glances back over his right shoulder to see if the German is chasing. There is a figure coming out of the murk towards him, but it’s Leblanc not the yellow jersey. Then he goes again. ‘Pantani ha fatto il vuoto,’ De Zan declares a few moments later.
At the summit, where Mercatone Uno directeur sportif Orlando Maini is waiting in the road to hand Pantani a rain jacket, the Italian’s advantage is just over three minutes, making him the Tour’s virtual leader. He’s lucid enough to stop a kilometre or so down the mountain to pull his flapping jacket on securely, a manoeuvre that enables Christophe Rinero and José María Jiménez, breakaways dropped just before the crest of the Galibier, to regain contact and, crucially, share the pace-making with him down to the Lauteret pass and on the long, steady drop into a headwind from there to the foot of Les Deux Alpes, during which they’re joined by three more riders. Ullrich, on the other hand, doesn’t get a jacket and, following a puncture approaching the final climb, repeats the mistake he made at Plateau de Beille by chasing back with too much gusto. When he starts to climb again, now four minutes behind Pantani, he looks like he’s pedalling through treacle.
‘Pantani, with his way of racing that’s instinctive and creative, based on a talent that’s beautiful but can also be defined as a bit naïve because he doesn’t calculate but instead makes big attacks on any climb, is returning the sport to its most beautiful dimension,’ says Cassani when the Italian is halfway up the climb.
He’s right, or at least at that moment he was, because even as that Tour sank into the mire of doping and deceit, Pantani rose above it and was lauded for saving the race and the sport with a performance that was a throwback to the glory days of Coppi and Bartali, turning a three-minute deficit on Ullrich into a six-minute lead. The last time the Tour had seen anything that compared was Luis Ocaña’s dismantling of Eddy Merckx in 1971.
The next day, the front page of L’Equipe featured a picture of him attacking on the Galibier with the headline C’est un Géant. ‘When he crossed the line, he closed his eyes and spread his arms, like Christ on the cross. This man was forged in suffering,’ wrote Jean-Michel Rouet inside the sports daily, before listing his many injuries and setbacks, then suggesting he’d given, ‘an extraordinary lesson in perseverance, in courage, in grandeur… his charisma and genius returning to us the legend of the solitary rider in the storm, the legend of Fausto Coppi and of Charly Gaul’.
Gianni Mura, too, highlighted this Christ-like moment, suggesting that it was almost like he was saying, ‘I could have done less, but I carried my cross and did it for you.’
This is an extract from Climbers: Pain, panache and polka dots in cycling’s greatest arenas by Peter Cossins (Cassell, 2022).