(CHEERING)
PHIL LIGGETT: Lance Armstrong takes on Marco Pantani
as he heads up towards the mountain.
Here comes The Pirate moving. Now, what are they going to do about this?
This is an attack by Marco Pantani.
C'est l'attaque qu'on attendait. Marco Pantani attaque!
LIGGETT: He's in and out of the saddle. He's almost sprinting up the hill here.
COMMENTATOR: Marco Pantani anche oggi ha dimostrato di essere un fuoriclasse.
BRADLEY WIGGINS: A lot ofcycling is about climbing mountains.
And he personified how it should look in this floating, angelic sense
that it was effortless for him.
PAULSHERWEN: Armstrong now is actually a little in difficulty, I would say, Phil.
Marco Pantani. But look at that,
so is Jan Ullrich, looking down for gears and looking down for help.
(CHEERING)
COMMENTATOR: Marco Pantani dopo 33 anni rivince il Tour de France.
Pantani won the 1 998 Giro and the Tour and he was a dynamic rider.
He was one of the riders
that was so strong, that could make up the deficit
in the climbs that he lost in the time trials.
SHERWEN: He has learned how to suffer again.
Look at the face on Marco Pantani.
(CHEERING)
WIGGINS: I got to race with him.
I remember being in awe of this guy.
I think he was the people's champion and he would ride past
with these 50, 60 people chasing him, like this god that people worshipped.
LIGGETT: Look at this crowd now, because they love him so much.
I almost felt...
not worthy to be in his company.
(TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN)
LIGGETT: Marco Pantani will not be climbing the highest mountains
on the Giro d'Italia.
COMMENTATOR: Disperazione, rabbia contro una decisione ritenuta ingiusta.
PANTANI:
LIGGETT: Pantani has come back to the Tour de France!
Now he's winning again!
(TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN)
LE MOND: There is something magical about the Tour.
IT's like The Wizard Of Oz when you go into the fairy tale,
where everything's exaggerated - the flowers, the colours.
MATT RENDELL: Three weeks, thousands of miles
and the yellowjersey at the end of it.
WIGGINS: It's the only sporting event in the world
where it's long enough that you'd probably need a haircut halfway through.
EVGENI BERZIN:
LE MOND: That's why you'll see teams working together,
because everybody's escorting the top riders,
delivering them to the bottom of the climb.
"OK, go. Do the battle, do the battle."
RICHARD WILLIAMS: There's no doubt that the mountains
give those stage races their drama.
RENDELL: In the mountains you have the very obvious,
visible opposition between man and nature.
The sheer unnaturalness of riding a bike uphill...
It's Sisyphean.
WIGGINS: You want to stop all the time.
You're unable to. You have to push on.
LE MOND: And so it's where the pure, raw talent gets to come out
and gets to separate itself from the rest of the riders.
WILLIAMS: Mountains were what gave the race its flavour...
...because you could see these men suffering.
- (CHEERING) - (APPLAUSE)
RENDELL: In the early 1990s, cycling became...less mystical.
Calculation began to take
the place of inspiration in cycling. Self-evidently, you could see
aerodynamic helmets, bodysuits.
Low, wind-tested positions.
It was scientific.
Miguel Indurain, for the previous two years,
had won the great races - the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France.
- (CHEERING) - (APPLAUSE)
A colossus of a man.
The prototype of the world-beating cyclist.
WILLIAMS: He was formidable in any stage.
A guy who can ride at high tempo all day, in a relentless way,
to grind the opposition to dust.
RENDELL: Incredibly fast in the time trials,
he could hold on in the mountains.
Indurain was widely regarded as utterly invincible.
The Giro d'Italia, almost as tough as the Tour de France.
Indurain was going for his third consecutive Giro/Tour double.
It was unheard of.
(HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR)
(CHEERING)
ITALIAN COMMENTATOR:
BERZIN:
WILLIAMS: Indurain was probably pushing 80 kilos and six foot two.
Pantani was five foot eight and weighed 50 kilos.
It's like a heavyweight and a flyweight.
That's one of the great things about cycling,
is that you can have a heavyweight and a flyweight in the same ring together.
RENDELL: Indurain was scientific.
Pantani rode from pure instinct.
His descending was stunning.
WILLIAMS: He'd just hook his rear end over the saddle,
to become as aerodynamic as possible.
RENDELL: We're talking 80, 90, 1 00 kilometres an hour.
WIGGINS: And all of a sudden it was Pantani, a man who looked the age of 40,
cos he was bald and slightly frail, but actually was only 24.
RENDELL: Televisions came on all over Italy, France, Spain.
He seemed to catch the imagination in a way that no other cyclist had ever done.
He beat Indurain into third place.
Immediately, a star was born.
RENDELL: It had taken years for Indurain to start making the podiums.
Pantani did it almost instantly.
He restored a sense of the magic to the sport that had been forgotten.
It was like going back 50 years.
(CHURCH BELLS TOLL)
PAOLO PANTANI:
TONINA PANTANI:
AMADUCCI:
- (CHEERING) - (APPLAUSE)
COMMENTATOR: Pantani è scattato all'inizio della salita...
COMMENTATOR: Terzo, Marco Pantani della Rinascita...
COMMENTATOR: Ora coi primi is portano Andreani, Settembrini e Pantani.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
ITALIAN COMMENTATOR:
VITTORIO SAVINI:
LE MOND: There is only one thing
that drives somebody to get to professional. It's passion.
They have to love it.
I would call it an addiction. (LAUGHS)
RENDELL: There's something about cycling. It's a sport for loners.
You spend a long, long time pre-season doing base miles,
emaciating your physique into the shape it has to be in to be competitive.
LE MOND: But something changes when you turn professional. All of a sudden,
there's real pressure on you.
You're no longer doing this for this passion,
you're getting paid and they expect you to perform.
WILLIAMS: The thing about a stage race is that it's notjust one race,
it's lots of different races.
To win the yellowjersey for the overall victory, that's the best thing.
But stage wins are really, really important.
The Alpe d'Huez, it's a single climb,
1 3.8 kilometres, with 2 1 hairpin bends.
WILLIAMS: It's steep, an average of 8% gradient.
WILLIAMS: It's actually like a bullring.
LIGGETT: Now we're on the great climb of Alpe d'Huez
and look at this, this man, Marco Pantani,
has left the field and is in pursuit of the leaders.
GIUSEPPE RONCUCCI:
LIGGETT: I've not seen so many Italians.
They will go absolutely crazy
when they hear that Marco Pantani is going into the lead of this stage.
SAVINI:
LIGGETT: The parting of the waters for Marco Pantani.
What a marvellous moment for him.
RENDELL: On the climbs, the physical demands are immense.
It's the same competitive challenge kids in swimming pools do -
holding their breath - who's going to give up first?
Who's going to asphyxiate themselves longest,
until you're almost at the point of blacking out?
And that's what climbing up a hill is like, and that's what Pantani could do
more than anyone else -
descend into the darkness, hold it there and then come out alive.
LIGGETT: This beautiful man who attacked at the bottom of the climb
and used such pure speed that's only given to the gifted climbers of this world.
COMMENTATOR: Marco Pantani può alzare il braccio. Vince.
WILLIAMS: To be a stage winner in the Tour de France is something very special.
You've established yourself.
WILLIAMS: Cycling's a very dangerous sport.
A moment's lack of concentration can bring you down, and maybe 20 or 30 other riders.
It's bad enough on the flat, but if they're coming down a hill at high speed
then that's seriously dangerous.
LIGGETT: The crash on the descent of the Pyrenean mountain,
it involved six riders.
One of those riders, Dante Rezze, plunged 30 feet into a ravine.
Fabio Casartelli was not so lucky.
SHERWEN: He hit the waterbottle
that must've been dropped by one of the other riders.
LIGGETT: And it's Marco Pantani, the great climber,
in collision with Alberto Elli.
RENDELL: The Milan-Turin race, 1 995.
Not one of the most important dates in the cycling calendar.
It didn't really matter to Marco how he did.
Reaches the final climb of Superga, darts up it.
And then, on the way down, it's classic, the Pantani descent.
Huge speed.
The police radio comms have failed.
(RADIO CHATTER)
And suddenly there's a car coming towards them.
That was where it all went wrong.
- (BRAKES SCREECH) - (CRASH)
RADIO: Attenzione, c'è stato un incidente sulla strada. Ciclisti a terra.
Per favore, attenzione...
The police hadn't closed down the roads properly.
RADIO: C'è stato un incidente sulla strada. Ripeto, incidente sulla strada
con feriti gravi. Ciclisti a terra.
(DISTANT SIRENS WAIL)
There's a terrible, terrible impact
and that is, possibly, Pantani's career over.
TONINA PANTANI:
RENDELL: He has a broken leg that will, for the rest of his life,
be shorter than the other leg.
The doctors, they're undecided whether he'll even walk again.
PANTANI:
CENNI:
(ARCHIVE SPANISH NEWS REPORT)
WOMAN:
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
RENDELL: He comes back from that injury
and he's no longer Marco, he's Il Pirata, The Pirate.
And suddenly there is a whole kind of pantomime dimension to this figure
who's already caught the public imagination.
PANTANI:
LIGGETT: Marco Pantani is there. Are we seeing the return of this man?
I sincerely hope so.
Now Pantani has pinned them all to the surface of Alpe d'Huez
and is going to ride away from them now.
This brilliant little climber
who almost lost his life in a serious accident in a race nearly two years ago.
They said he would never walk or ride a bike again.
He's now come back, two years on, to Alpe d'Huez
and he's destroying the field here.
Pantani is coming!
He is going to take it because he wants to!
He wants to remind everybody he has come back to the Tour de France!
WILLIAMS: To come back and win the stage at the Alpe d'Huez in record time...
That's superhuman.
He looked like he'd never been away.
LIGGETT: Two years ago he was winning, then he was injured.
Now he's winning again.
(CHEERING)
CENNI:
(APPLAUSE)
ANNOUNCER: Et voilà les trois coureurs sur le podium...
- (CHEERING) - (AIR HORNS BLARE)
UGRUMOV:
RONCUCCI:
RENDELL: Marco was rich, famous and single.
And then he met Christina.
WILLIAMS: Pantani was back.
Perhaps,finally, he could achieve his potential to win a major tour.
The deciding stage of the Giro would come at Montecampione
in a head-to-head with Pavel Tonkov, the former champion.
ITALIAN COMMENTATORS:
TONINA PANTANI:
COMMENTATOR: Tonkoval contrattacco.
COMMENTATOR: Attenzione! Attenzione!
È il momento decisivo. Pantani scatta.
ITALIAN COMMENTATOR:
CROWD CHANTS: Pantani! Pantani! Pantani!
(CHEERING)
PANTANI:
ITALIAN COMMENTATOR:
WILLIAMS: He had five weeks to prepare for the Tour de France.
RENDELL: The Tourde France doesn't start in France at all in 1 998.
It starts in Dublin.
LIGGETT: I don't think they've quite got it right there,
- but they're working on it. - SHERWEN: Veve. Veve le Tour!
LIGGETT: So, the race is now well and truly on the way
and who will wear the next yellowjersey?
We'll find out later.
RENDELL: To win the Giro and the Tour
would put Pantani in a tiny, elite group of men
like Anquetil, Merckx and Indurain - the legends of the sport.
WILLIAMS: But almost before the race began
it looked like Pantani's dream would become impossible.
As the Tour de France is getting under way,
news filters through that a team car belonging to the Festina team
has been stopped at the border between Belgium and France
and a huge scandal begins to build up.
LIGGETT: The morale of the Festina team today is at a very low ebb,
following the arrest in France of a team masseur
who was found to be carrying an amount of steroids in his car.
REPORTER: While Bruno Roussel headed to Cholet police station last night,
Dr Rijkaert was being questioned inside the Festina technical support van
at the team hotel.
Shortly after that, he too was taken into custody and driven away.
(TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH)
We've got... I've got family. I've got, er...
I've got...I've got a child, er...
and I've got a good image.
I've been a professional 1 5 years and I've passed probably 200 dope controls.
I'm clean.
Well, it's 2.1 8, which was to have been Neil Stephens' start time today
but, as you can see, there's no sign of him in the start house
and, apart from the continuing presence of their logos everywhere,
it looks, after all the machinations of this morning,
as though Festina's involvement in this year's Tour is finally over.
Nous reviendrons l'année prochaine.
(TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH)
WILLIAMS: Cycling's attracted a lot of criticism
because of its attitude to drugs.
The very earliest Tours de France were terribly gruelling.
Riders soon started to find ways of numbing the pain,
whether it was brandy or strychnine or heroin
or mixtures of any and all of those.
Jacques Anquetil, who won the race five times,
in the years after the war, once said,
"You can't win the Tour de France on mineral water,"
and everybody knew what he meant.
(THEY SING IN ITALIAN)
(APPLAUSE)
But it wasn't really until Tom Simpson, the British cyclist,
died on the Mont Blanc Tour in 1 967 that people really woke up to the fact
that maybe we ought to be starting to make these things illegal.
REPORTER: The biggest scandal in sporting history.
Most say they're innocent, but the admission by one team
that they, at least, have been on a systematic drugs programme for two years
has rocked the sport.
RENDELL: There are police raids on hotels, riders are arrested, strip-searched,
and there is every possibility that the race will not make it to Paris
for the first time in history.
LIGGETT: LaurentJalabert said, "The riders are disgusted
"by everything that has gone on.
"We will not be treated like cattle. Today, we will not take to our bikes."
(TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH)
RONCUCCI:
PANTANI:
RONCUCCI:
LIGGETT: Jalabert, Marco Pantani and Luc LeBlanc
were initially said to have withdrawn with their teams.
After a further hour of slow pedalling, all of the riders were in the peloton.
The tour was back on...for now.
WILLIAMS: Pantani didn't have a great start to the 1 998 Tour.
By stage seven, he'd lost four minutes to Jan Ullrich.
LIGGETT: Well, I'm going to go, I think, like the majority,
and stay with Jan Ullrich,
because I think he's found his form at the right moment.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
WIGGINS: Ullrich dominated the '97 tour
and I think, once he took yellow in '98, it was like, "Oh, here we go again."
WILLIAMS: German cyclist, good time triallist, very formidable.
The man, really, to take over from Indurain.
(WIND HOWLS)
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
(THUNDER CRACKS)
BERZIN:
(THUNDER CRACKS)
FRENCH COMMENTATOR:
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
RENDELL: But, 4km from the summit of the Galibier, Pantani attacked.
MARCO VELO:
COMMENTATOR: C'est l'attaque qu'on attendait. Marco Pantani attaque!
FRENCH COMMENTATOR:
RENDELL: In 4km he was able to reclaim four minutes off Ullrich.
It was stunning.
FRENCH COMMENTATOR:
WILLIAMS: There are two kinds of courage in cycling.
One is the courage to keep going to get yourself to the top of the mountain
and the other is putting your head down and going for it on the descent.
Oui, c'est très difficile pour les coureurs dans les descents.
COMMENTATORS IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES:
RENDELL: And Pantani, from starting the stage four minutes behind...
...ended it nearly six minutes ahead.
To win the Giro and the Tour, it's never been done since.
It's something Lance Armstrong never even attempted.
(CHEERING)
(TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN)
Viva!
(CHEERING)
(TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN)
(ACCENTED ENGLISH)
(TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN)
ROBERTO PREGNOLATO:
ITALIAN REPORTER:
WILLIAMS: The Festina affair, which stopped the '98 Tour dead in its tracks,
was really the culmination of investigations into EPO.
EPO controls the production of red blood cells.
A large number of red blood cells are a good thing for endurance athletes
cos it gives their muscles better access to oxygen.
RENDELL: You have powers you simply did not have before.
If you have a 200km stage, a 1 % improvement is a 2km advantage.
Artificial EPO appeared in about 1 990, so its use was very widespread.
But when young, otherwise very fit cyclists in Holland and Belgium
started dying in their sleep, it became apparent it was overused.
A concentration of red blood cells would make the blood silt up.
Riders started wearing their heart-rate monitors at night,
so that when the heart rate dropped the alarm would go off.
And they would have bikes on rollers, where they could raise their heart rate.
So, they'd race all day
and then they'd ride during the night as well,
simply to stay alive.
For the 1 999 season, a test is introduced.
It's not a doping test as such,
because there is no way of detecting directly EPO in the blood.
Instead, they introduce a health test.
If your haematocrit, your red blood cell count, is above 50%...
...you're suspended for two weeks.
In '98, he's won the great double.
In '99, Pantani wants to enter legend.
He wants to rival the great Fausto Coppi,
who would win stages by 1 0, 1 5, 20 minutes.
VELO:
RENDELL: His team-mates rode like an Olympic sprint on the track.
Each man leading out the others and then peeling off.
Sprinting uphill.
40km an hour.
It wasn'tjust a masterclass. It was a humiliation of his rivals.
All Italy is exulted.
But there are other interests at stake who aren't so happy.
PREGNOLATO:
RENDELL: If you think of a cycling peloton, you've got 1 80 riders.
There has to be give and take.
(TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN)
Televised cycling is about advertising.
Large companies are putting millions of euros into these teams
to get their logos on television screens around the world.
(TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH)
Pantani's total dominance is bad
for the financial structures that keep the sport healthy.
(INSECTS BUZZ)
His team have ordered him not to win the next stage,
but somehow he can't hold himself back.
Pantani comes soaring past, and Buenahora,
who's one of the best climbers in the world, gets on his wheel, holds it there.
But within 1 00, 200 metres...
...he's being asphyxiated by the speed of Pantani and he simply has to drop off,
because if he doesn't, he's not even going to finish the stage.
And there is no doubt
that this is going to be one of the great victories in Giro history.
PANTANI:
PREGNOLATO:
SAVINI:
VELO:
LIGGETT: Well, as we look down on Madonna di Campiglio this morning,
2 1 st stage of the Giro d'Italia, there is terrible news.
ITALIAN REPORTER:
And that means out of the Giro d'Italia goes Marco Pantani.
VELO:
UGRUMOV:
RONCUCCI:
(CROWD SHOUTS AND APPLAUDS)
SAVINI:
RENDELL: Pantani could have ridden the 1 999 Tour de France,
but there were two reasons why he didn't.
One, he felt humiliated.
And two, by the time the Tour de France started,
he was already taking cocaine.
Pantani became obsessed with the idea that a plot had been formulated to entrap him.
NICOLA AMADUCCI:
ITALIAN REPORTER:
SAVINI:
(DIAL TONE)
VELO:
INTERVIEWER:
VELO:
INTERVIEWER: You've called Marco Pantani the best climber in the world
What does that make you?
I'm just an average climber
that, er...that has a couple of good days every once in a while.
WILLIAMS: Armstrong had won it in '99. He was looking very powerful.
The stage was set for a battle royal between the two of them.
Pantani, I respect him, I don't want to say that he's out of the race, but...
it would be hard to make up 1 0 or 1 1 minutes.
SHERWEN: And Marco Pantani getting out of the saddle.
VELO:
LIGGETT: The Pirate's gone again. Up on the inside he went.
And this is his third big attack, and this time there is no reaction.
(CHEERING)
Well, this is superb cycling by little Marco.
He'll go back into the popularity poll here.
SHERWEN: Butnow Armstrong is going to go.
LIGGETT: Well, look at this. Armstrong, and they wouldn't have expected that.
And he's gone off after Pantani.
LE MOND: It was very difficult to watch Pantani,
who'd won the Tour riding up this climb.
LIGGETT: He's taken a real good look at Marco, almost saying,
"The back wheel for you, Marco, jump on if you can."
LE MOND: And you have Armstrong talking on the phone.
I mean, that's just unheard of.
WILLIAMS: Eventually, they got to the top,
and Pantani appeared to win the sprint for the line.
SHERWEN: Pantani's gone over the line in first place, Phil.
That is unbelievable. Armstrong has gone second.
RENDELL: There was a moment of ambiguity.
Did Armstrong let him win the stage or had Pantani outsprinted the American?
A spat began between Armstrong and Pantani.
I don't know what Pantani's thinking, but...
He's just a little shit starter, so...
LE MOND: The way that Armstrong belittled him...
One thing you have to do is respect your competitors.
Le Ventoux was a mistake, and, er...I won't do it again.
RENDELL: Pantani went on to beat Armstrong on the stage to Courchevel.
LIGGETT: This is an attack by Marco Pantani. Sprinting up the hill here.
SHERWEN: Armstrong, now....
LIGGETT: Pantani has come back to the Tour de France.
Now he's winning again.
RENDELL: But the next day he abandoned the race due to stomach cramps.
PREGNOLATO:
PANTANI:
WILLIAMS: Pantani had looked like the real challenge to Armstrong's supremacy.
He couldn't sustain it.
Which, of course, helped clear the way for the Armstrong era to roll on,
however it was achieved.
VELO:
RENDELL: In 2000, news broke internationally
of the biggest investigation into doping so far.
ITALIAN REPORTER:
Francesco Conconi was the man that the IOC and the UCI
and the Italian sports authorities were paying to develop a test for EPO.
ITALIAN REPORTER:
RENDELL: IT was scandalous.
It wasn't a doped rider here, a doped rider there.
It was a culture of doping.
ITALIAN REPORTER:
Among the many, many names,
there were Tour de France winners, like Bjarne Riis,
there were Giro winners, like Berzin.
And there was also Marco Pantani's name.
One doping scandal piled on another, and the shame that he felt
to have been thrown out of the Giro d'Italia
would only be compounded by this sequence of scandals,
police investigations and trials.
ITALIAN REPORTER:
WILLIAMS: With Pantani, you could see the suffering.
Sometimes with people in sport, you take their sport away
and they find there's nothing left.
UGRUMOV:
He was eventually taking massive amounts of cocaine.
TONINA PANTANI:
INTERVIEWER:
RENDELL: Given an entirely clean sport during his era,
Pantani would almost certainly still have excelled.
WIGGINS: I don't think any of us can imagine what it would have been like then,
all the pressures he'd have been under.
If you were going to survive, and if you wanted to win,
or be a professional and make a living, you had to do what you were told to do.
RENDELL: I don't think you can separate a man from the decisions that he takes.
But decisions aren't taken in isolation.
Pantani turned professional and joined a team, Carrera,
and finds himself in the company of doctors
funded notjust by the state but by the great sporting institutions.
And all this is available forhim andhe is the hope of Italian cycling.
It creates pressures that I don't think any of us could resist.
The doctors,
the directeurs sportifs, the general managers of the teams, the sponsors,
the beneficiaries of doped sport...
...they carry on earning good money, they carry on with their prestige.
And the athletes are the instruments of the system.
Pantani was an instrument of the sporting system.
It brought him fantastic success,
but ultimately led to his complete destruction.
UGRUMOV:
ITALIAN REPORTER:
WILLIAMS: It was like Senna's death, or Princess Di's death.
It was something that engaged a whole country
and you could just feel that it gripped the nation.
(APPLAUSE)
REPORTER: È l'ultimo applauso di migliaia di persone a Marco Pantani.
Poi la bara che viene portata a spalle al cimitero di Cesenatico.
Sono le istantanee di una giornata di grande dolore.
LE MOND: In 2002, we had the presentation for the 1 00th anniversary of the Tour
and Pantani's manager came over.
She said, "Marco would like to meet you."
There was this image of him being this criminal.
Pantani the Pirate.
I looked into his eyes and it was the eyes of a 1 6-year-old kid.
There was a sadness to him, but an innocence too.
You peel it apart, you could see that he's the kid that loved cycling.
Most addictions are about pain.
My feeling is that the cocaine was a way to medicate.
If hewas cheating, the shame was almost unbearable to live with.
PANTANI:
AMADUCCI:
TONINA PANTANI:
COMMENTATOR: Marco Pantani è veramente un fuoriclasse...
COMMENTATOR: L'attaque de Marco Pantani...
COMMENTATOR: Scatta e scatta ancora...
LIGGETT: Pantani is coming! He's going to take it...
COMMENTATOR: Grandissimo scalatore...
COMMENTATOR: Marco Pantani oggi ha dimostrato di essere un fuoriclasse...
COMMENTATOR: Marco Pantani vince! Trionfa! Alza le braccia...