Gianni Bugno: Never quite good enough

I think the last time I cheered for the guy who won the Tour de France must have been Greg LeMond in 1990. Although he would later become one of my favorite riders ever, I didn’t cheer for Jan Ullrich in 1997 because wasn’t cool enough yet.  I didn’t cheer for another eternal favorite, Marco Pantani, in 1998 because I was too distracted by whatever kids in college do when they turn 21 and become compelled to explore the effects of (legally) combining alcohol with every imaginable activity.

I rarely cheer for the guy who wins a bike race because I’m usually busy cheering for the guy who will probably loose it, just.  This underdog business started in 1991, when I hoped Gianni Bugno would win the Tour.  I could never get excited about Miguel Indurain (there really wasn’t anything exciting about him, was there?), but I had never been a fan of Bugno’s, either.  That changed the moment I saw him fighting up to Val-Louron, pedaling in his smooth style wearing his tricolore of Italian Road Champion in hopeless pursuit of the escaped Indurain and Claudio Chiappucci.  It was at that moment that I embarked on a journey of heartbreak punctuated by brief moments of elation when my favorite riders defy the odds to experience success in the biggest races.

There is nothing exciting about watching the best riders in the world win the biggest races in the world time and again. There is no excitement in watching the pre-race favorite pull on the Maillot Jaune, again.  There is no excitement in watching the best lead out train deliver the fastest sprinter to the line at the close of every flat race.  It’s always impressive – don’t get me wrong – but it isn’t “exciting”.  It is the opposite, actually – it’s “predictable”.

Exciting is watching a rider show courage in the face of loads of pain and almost certain defeat. Exciting is watching a rider take a chance on a day-long break. Exciting is watching a rider attack over and over again because maybe just one more attack is all it will take to win. The riders who dare hope and take chances are those who inspire me. This is a hard road; I spend most of the races disappointed that my favorite rider lost. But on the days when they win, the thrill tastes sweet upon my tongue.

I cheered for Bugno throughout the ’91 Tour and again in ’92. He was Gianni Bugno, the Big Engine that Just Might. By ’93, he was so deeply into his “Indurain Complex” that he was more “frustrating” than he was “exciting”; he had become Gianni Bugno, the Big Engine that Usually Didn’t. That was a different kind of predictable, but predictable all the same. I moved on, and over the years have found various other riders to support in equal measure who each show similar properties in terms of talent, skill, determination, and likelihood of winning.

Le Grand Frère Grimpeur is my current favorite Big Engine that Just Might, and I think he’ll stay in that position throughout his career, mostly because he’s not likely to ever be good enough to win the Tour.  But every year I’ll hope he does, because that would be exciting. Sadly, he crashed out this year, and as such Le Petite Frère Grimpeur took his place. The little zipper might have won, too, were it not for some bad luck and questionable tactics.  It wasn’t to be, and this year at least, he was the Big Engine that Couldn’t Quite.

And therein lies the secret: He was almost The Big Engine that Barely Did.  And next year he appears to be the Big Engine that Probably Could but Might Not. But as soon as he become the Big Engine That Usually Does, it stops being exciting, and I’ll have to move on.

As far as Tours de France go – certainly those in the last decade – the 2010 edition ranks among the best, even if we could have been treated to less tactical riding and more opportunistic attacks.  The defending champion showed signs of being the Big Engine that Might Not, and that gave for lots of excitement on both sides of the cheering fence. Here’s hoping next year’s edition proves to be at least as good as this one.

Certified hardman and aesthete, the Swiss rider Hugo Koblet.

There are those who are challenged to find the value of aesthetics in a sport which requires eating 11T cogs buttered with chain oil for breakfast and drinking kegs of Rule 5 at dinner. Ye of the Congoscenti, I present you with the following photos of some of the quintessential hardmen of our sport who rode during an era when merely climbing aboard a bicycle – let alone to race one – was an act of stony hardness which, by comparison, casts modern riders into the realm of the indolent.

Indeed, these were men who rode over the same mountain passes that we ride today, but did so on unpaved roads aboard bicycles weighing 20 kilos.  They turned massive gears out of necessity, and rode races that were many times longer than those we see today.  These were men who wore motorcycle goggles for a lack of any cycling-specific eye wear; who wore their spare tires in a figure-eight pattern looped over their shoulders. These were the hardest men imaginable.

Most of them also rode with a comb in their pocket to ensure they always looked their best the moment they stopped pedaling their machines.  These men were Giants who understood that the finer things in life and in this sport are what make it worthwhile to suffer so.

So next time you pack your energy gels and inner tube into your jersey pocket, make sure you leave room for a comb.

A bunch of men, those.

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Schleck suffers a dramatic mechanical and the loss of his Yellow Jersey: Photo Bettini Photo

Of all people, a Velominatus knows that our sport is a civilized one; it is steeped in tradition and etiquette and rife with unwritten rules. High on the list of unwritten rules are those that outline acceptable behavior when various hardships befall the leader of a Grand Tour. One of the reasons such rules exist is due to the brutally difficult nature of our sport; in the context of stage races where crashes and mechanical incidents are a part of daily life and can have a major impact on the competitive landscape, such conventions and agreements form a foundation in the quest to find the winner of the events through athletic, tactical, and strategic superiority while minimizing the impact that misfortune may have on the final outcome. The Golden Rule in this case is that riders are never to attack the race leader when they suffer a crash or mechanical incident.

At the Giro d’Italia, on Stage 7 over the Strada Bianchi, the race leader Vincenzo Nibali crashed and was left to struggle behind.  The question was raised then, why did the leaders not wait for Nibali, the fallen Maglia Rosa, to rejoin before continuing to race? One reason might be that Nibali wasn’t considered a legitimate threat to take the final win.  Another reason was that the race was on in full force and as such there were too many riders already attacking at the moment of the crash.  Justified or not, the sportsmanlike thing to do would be to wait. They didn’t, and in the end it had little impact on the result (the winner, Ivan Basso, was also held up in the crash), but a small bit of our accepted etiquette died with the decision to continue on.

Today at the Tour de France, we saw a similar situation where the Brother Grimpeur the Younger distanced rival Alberto Contador before a mechanical eventually saw him lose his Yellow Jersey.  Schleck had to stop to right his dropped chain, and while he did so, Contodor came by him and pushed his advantage home, all the way to the finish.  In the end, Schleck lies a few seconds behind Bertie, and in truth the 30 second lead he had before the incident was likely not enough to win the Tour. Indeed, little has changed in the reality we face in the coming days: Andy must attack Contador if he is to win this year’s Tour.

One thing that has changed, however, is that Contador has proven something I have long suspected: he is a rider whose ambition to win is greater than his sense of sportsmanship.  Marko has written in these archives about the A.C. Enigma and his ambivalence towards this rider.  Bertie has given us little reason to love him, aside from his blistering accelerations up the steepest grades in the mountains.  He has also given us little reason to hate him, for we know little about him. For me, the greatest riders are those who perhaps do not win often, but they lose with class and dignity, and they fight. Riders who display dignity and respect for the sport and fellow athletes in the midst of dishing out huge helpings of Rule 5 is what endears a rider to this particular heart. Jan Ullrich is the prime example of this; his sportsmanship on the slopes of Luz Ardiden in the face of an opportunity to win the 2003 Tour is unmatched.   Even after spending year after year being beaten by Armstrong into second place; he still had the overriding sense of sportsmanship to wait and resist pushing home the advantage when Armstrong crashed.

In our sport, a champion is one who holds the unwritten rules of conduct in higher regard than a trophy.  These are the athletes who understand that the very manner in which they set about achieving their results will be woven into the fabric of their career and weigh more heavily than the golden trophies of their victories.

At the end of the day, little has been decided in the outcome of the Tour.  The one thing that has been determined is that Alberto Contodor is not a true champion, for he would rather win another Tour de France than show his fellow colleagues (not to mention the fans of this sport) the opportunity to discover who is the strongest through head-to-head competition. Alberto Contodor has shown his true colors as a great rider for whom winning is more important than sportsmanship.

Tomorrow will dawn with a renewed opportunity for Andy Schleck to also show his true colors.  Will he protect his second place and race conservatively into Paris, or will he rise up to fight and try to win the Tour despite today’s setback?  I have a feeling that we are about to be treated to the latter.  I certainly hope so.

Alberto Contador did not need to wait today.  But he should have, for ours is a civilized sport, and we, fellow cyclists, are not animals.

The Mountains are lonely place to race alone.

Those who complete the Tour de France are referred to as The Giants of the Road, and a look back at the first week of the Tour doesn’t leave much room for wondering why.  With barely ten stages behind us, we’ve seen some amazing battles.  We’ve seen Pharmstrong take a small psychological win over Contodor in the opening Prologue.  We’ve seen Cavendouche start his Green Jersey quest by missing a turn in the closing kilometers of Stage 1 and crashing. We’ve seen nearly the whole bunch crash on oil-slicked roads into Brussels on Stage 2.  Stage 3 saw several riders with broken bones – Tyler Farrar and Robert Gesink among them – suffer over the cobblestones of Northern France.  Stage 4 saw Petacchi further beat the Cavencanhestilldoitdish’s ego into the tarmac before Stage 5 saw a triumphant Cavenyeshecandish prove that he still can win a gallop, even under pressure.

Stage 6 was much of the same story as Stage 5, except one important difference: first loser of the stage went to a man with a broken wrist. A pro sprinter once told me, “Sprinting is easy.  You just try to break your handlebars.”  Seems like that might be a trifle dodgey with a busted wrist.  Stage 7 saw the GC contenders watch each other as Sylvan Chavenel snuck off with a Maillot Juane that he would have normally have held throughout the first week, had he not been touched by the Seven Eyed Spider Monkey Devil on Stage 3.

Stage 8 had Grimpeur the Younger take a small psychological win over Bertie as he dropped him and put a small time gap into him, which is the first time this has happened in recent memory (although, if we wipe away the mind-cobwebs set in by all the ale we drink, we recall that Contador won the Giro by only a small margin and the Vuelta only by aggregate time bonuses awarded at stage finishes; perhaps he’s not the dominant figure we portray and curse him to be.)  Stage 8 also saw two GC contenders felled by the same crash demonstrate decidedly different reactions to their falls: Cadel Evans took his second Yellow Jersey and Lance Armstrong took his first massive beating in the Tour de France.

And here we jump headlong into armchair quarterbacking.  We give Armstrong a rough ride here at the Velominati. In fact, we generally refer to him as “Pharmstrong”.  But, in truth, he has our respect even if we don’t appreciate him.  There’s no denying that the man can suffer like none other.  He survived cancer to win the Tour de France seven times. Regardless of any drugs he may or may not have taken to do so, he won against what was presumably a level playing field through planning, preparation, and training (and, allegedly, a bribe or two).  In light of that, his most famous quote serves as an inspiration to fans and non-fans alike: ”Pain is temporary, quitting is forever.”

A lot was made of Armstrong’s crashes and the effect they had on his performance that day. Continuing on after a crash is tough, and catching back onto the bunch takes a big effort, but for a man who lives by the above quote, it’s what would expect of him.  He hadn’t suffered any injuries other than some road rash, but the fight had gone out of him, and he dropped away from the leaders.  As the day wore on, the Man with the Hammer paid him a visit and bopped him on the head, and he fell even farther back. For me, it was deeply disappointing to see him give up; you could sense it in his body language as he gave up and phoned it into the finish, falling thoroughly out of contention.

Much less was made of the fact that Evans had also gone down in one of the crashes with Armstrong.  Despite this, he managed to not only stay with the leaders; he took the Maillot Jaune while nursing a broken elbow. Stage 10 over the Col du Madeliene proved too much and he lost his Golden Fleece, but the man never gave up and he fought into the finish only 8 minutes behind two guys who are definitely not Too Fat to Climb and blew the race apart.

Another Legend performance came from Garmin’s David Millar, who has rib and chest injuries in addition to suffering from a fever.  He rode the entire stage alone during what he called one of his worst days ever on a bike.

It was a long ride, nothing to do with a time trial. It was very draining physically and emotionally.  I saw myself out of the Tour de France. But I could not face going back to the hotel and facing my team mates being out of the Tour. I decided to go to the finish, even if it meant finishing hors delais (outside the time limit).

In contrast to Armstrong’s performance, to struggle along alone from start to finish over the mountains and in the heat with only injuries and illness along for company requires grinta; I can only imagine how tempting it must have been to climb into the team sag wagon.

But fighting on despite setbacks like Farrar, Gesink, Evans, and Millar demonstrated earns these guys permanent places in our hearts much more than winning races.  These are Giants of the Road indeed.

Steven Rooks wearing the Dotted Jumper in 1988

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m too fat to climb and therefor admire those who aren’t, or if it has something to do with the masochistic nature of sprinting to the top of every hill during a three-week race, but the competition for the best climber in the Tour de France has long captured my imagination.

The ugliest of all jerseys, it is also somehow the coolest one, despite the many abominations that have been created in the recent trends of matching the rest of one’s kit to competition leader jerseys.  Who would have the nerve to design a jersey made up of a pattern or red dots?  The French, apparently.

I first noticed it in the 1988 and 1989 Tours.  Here were these crazy, tall, lanky Dutchmen dominating the mountains.  The Dutch are flat landers for whom, aside from those living in the Southern province of Limburg, the phrase “Living at Elevation” means living at three meters.  But it turns out that tall Dutch guys can climb, as is routinely demonstrated by Robert Gesink in his countless mountain escapades – not to mention in yesterday’s finale up to Morzine-Avoriaz.

Recent memory has this jersey particularly stained by drug scandals, but a review of what is involved in challenging for – let alone winning – this jersey makes it somewhat easier to appreciate that a little dose of EPGo might help out.  The jersey is decided based on points awarded at the summit of each categorized climb along the route based on the following scale (from Wikipedia):

• Hors Catégorie climbs: 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 7, 6 and 5 points respectively for the 1st until the 10th rider to climb the mountain
• First category climbs: 15, 13, 11, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5 points respectively for the 1st until the 8th rider to climb the mountain
• Second category climbs: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5 points respectively for the 1st until the 6th rider to climb the mountain
• Third category climbs and hills : 4, 3, 2 and 1 point, respectively for the 1st until the 4th rider to climb the hill
• Fourth category climbs (hills): 3, 2, and 1 point, respectively for the 1st until the 3rd rider to climb the hill.

Consider, then, the profiles of mountain stages like we’ll have tomorrow to St.-Jean-de-Maurienne, and the weight of this competition starts to weigh heavy on the legs.  Climbing these mountains in the first place is hard enough, but to add a sprint to the top of them is something else altogether.  Drugs or not, that requires a heaping spoonful of Rule 5 and an intimate exploration of the depths of Rule 10.  Personally, I think Jérôme Pineau might just be mad enough to try for it this year, although it might also come down to Gesink if he were to give up his GC ambitions for the chance to take home the Spotted Tog.

In any case, whoever wins it will have my admiration.  And then I’ll hold my breath in anticipation of the doping suspension.

F Grimpeur, Banged but not yet Felled - Photo Courtesy of Universal Sports

First and foremost, as a cyclist and a devoted fan of this sport – a Velominatus, no less, – I express my deepest sympathies to the riders who crashed in Stage 2 of the Tour de France.  Blame was cast around, but as pointed out by Ben, there were many months of opportunity for the riders to  express their concern about the route – yet no one did.  That is because it was a good route; one raced by Eddy Merckx so many times the very climb whose descent caused the carnage in today’s stage bears a statue of his likeness.

In the end, the organizers cannot be held responsible for bad weather, and the riders cannot be held accountable for reacting in collective self-preservation when sticken en masse. Perhaps the stage finish should have been contested, and perhaps some will rue today’s lost opportunities, but the strongest riders in each competition will prevail, I’m sure of that. The lines between sportsmanship and Rule 5 were murky, and it really got everyone talking.  We’re all eternally biased by our views and our passion; that’s one of the things that distinguishes us from “science” and makes this a “sport”.  And goddammit, I love it and if there is one thing we do here at the Velominati, I hope it’s that we have a chance to say what we want to say and have a conversation.  No matter how wrong everyone else is.

The point I’d like to make is that what makes each of us a professional in our own little discpline is our ability to separate what we want to do from what we are paid to do.  Tomorrow’s stage three is a case in point.  Let today be what is was; Stage Three will feature a rough ride over some of the worst roads in Europe.  But, the men bouncing over those roads will not be amateurs out for a Tuesday group ride.  These will be professionals – many of whom are paid very handsomely - and their job is to race their bicycles across the route that the race organizers have laid out.

They are paid handsomely for a reason: their job is difficult and not many can accomplish what they are asked to do.  To be a professional cyclist means being able to do things and endure pain that I am humbled to imagine (quite frankly, I’m afraid of needles).  But the reason there is a paycheck waiting at the end of the day is because the professionals are providing a service that is worth paying for.

That “service” happens to be  entertainment.  If you’d like to protest the route, you have several months before the race to do so.  Once the race starts, protests have no place in this sport.  A professional should get on with their job, no matter how difficult it is.

I feel horrible for any rider denied their chance to a “fair” race – including Banged and Felled, Gesink, and Farrar – who may or may not be broken – but the fact remains: this is a bike race and shit happens.  You are paid to race a bike because you’re better at it than we are, and because competition is unpredictable, despite the fact that it may break our hearts.  In that light, to neutralize tomorrow’s race would be as bad as if we’d found a motor in Spartacus’ Shiv at the Prologue; it would be devastating beyond what any of us can justify in our passion of this sport.

Let me conclude this article with Five Ghosts from Tours Past, in case you still think today’s racers have it too hard:

1. The first Tour was 6 stages and 2,428 kilometers.  This year’s Tour is 3,642 kilometers in 20 stages.  That’s 3.06 times less Rule 5 than in 1903.
2. Dérailleurs were illegal until 1937.  Mountains weren’t, though, so riders had to loosen their rear wheel and reverse it to have a (marginally) better gear on the way up or down a hill.
3. In 1913, Eugene Christophe has to repair by welding his own fork after a crash in the village of Sainte-Marie-de-Campan (my favorite  village in France).  He refused assistance as being helped would render him disqualified from the race.  It was each man for themselves in 1913.
4. In 1963, the Tour organizers reduced the length of the individual time trials (plural) from 111 kilometers to 79 kilometers.
5. As recently as 1983, the Tour’s passes still contained unpaved roads.

A couple of rough roads don’t seem so bad when you look at that list.

I ask the Pro Peleton: Please don’t neutralize the race tomorrow.  For better or for worse, this is what you’re paid to do.  And next year, when the roads look this sketchy, take it up with the organizers in a professional way so everyone – the fans, the riders, and the organizers, all know what to expect.

The other Mr. 60 (photo: Sirotti)

To describe Piotr Ugrumov’s professional career as fleeting may be a tad on the unfair side.  While he enjoyed a good deal of success in his early years, he also seemed to burst onto the bigger stage of the Giro and Tour from relative obscurity, at least to this observer.  Looking back through his results though, reveals a talented climber and time triallist who used those assets to pick up a win at the Baby Giro (the Giro d’Italia for amateurs) in 1984, backed up with the Young Rider classification in his first crack at the Giro in 89, 8th on GC in 1990, and 2nd behind Miguel Indurain in 1993.  But it wasn’t until 1994 that the Latvian made his mark on Le Tour, and when he did, it really did appear to be a remarkable performance.

This was also the year that the Gewiss Ballan team ran roughshod over the peloton, coinciding with their collaboration with Dr Michele Ferrari.  Berzin had also ‘come from nowhere’ to win the Giro, and the now infamous 1-2-3 at Fleche Wallone was in the books with a huge asterisk next to it.  With Ugrumov skipping the Giro, he came into the Tour with a fire in his belly, and rocket fuel coursing through his veins.  Still, by the time he’d appeared on the radar in Stage 17, where the Colombian Rodriguez sucked his wheel all the way to the summit finish at Val Torrens before taking an classless win, Ugrumov only seemed a bit player in the bigger production of the world’s greatest race.  The next two stages were to elevate him into a much larger role.

Somehow finding remarkable powers of recovery after his day-long breakaway, Ugrumov went on the attack again, this time soloing into Cluses over two and a half minutes ahead of Indurain and Virenque, with Pantani even further back.  Then, the following stage saw him smash the long mountain time trial, putting 1.38 into the Pirate and 3.16 into Big Mig, catapulting him into second overall, a position he would maintain all the way to Paris.  And all this at the tender age of 32.  A late bloomer? Perhaps.

He would never reach those heady heights at the Tour again, although a 3rd at the 95 Giro and 7th at the 96 Tour are none-too-shabby in anyone’s books.  Yet, the ‘magic’ that had imbued him and his team in 94 was somehow never as potent, and a couple of seasons of mediocrity would spell the end of his career.  But Ugrumov did have one other impressive number next to his name; after being recorded as 32% in December 1994, his haematocrit level had jumped to a massive 60% in May 95, right in the middle of the Giro, and two days after following Rominger and Berzin in for 3rd in a TT.   

In a bizarre footnote to his involvement with the darker side of cycling, Ugrumov lived in an apartment directly across the street from the hotel where Marco Pantani met his death, and was planning to pay the Pirate a visit when he was told of the deteriorating mental and physical state of his former climbing foe.  He never got to make that visit, and we’ll never know if it would have made any difference to Pantani’s fate.  What we do know though, is that Piotr Ugrumov was one of the few riders who could challenge, and beat, the sport’s best climber on the biggest mountains of Italy and France.  Just how he achieved such feats, well, could it be all in the numbers?

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The bunch grinds up Chilkoot Hill in Stillwater, MN; Photo: Podium Cafe

I was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota at a time when the only cycling fame the area could lay claim to was that Greg LeMan lived in the area during the winters (I crossed paths with him many times skiing on the Birkebeiner trail, which was always pretty cool).  As far as professional bike racing went, there were very few top-level races, with most of the big spectacles being in the Pro-Am category.

That all changed when the Nature Valley Grand Prix was introduced several years ago.  The star attraction of the race was the Stillwater Criterium, which features a study in Rule 10 up Chilkoot Hill, a 20% monster that is so steep it sees more action from kids sledding on it in Winter than it does from car traffic in Summer.  The first year it was held, Michelle and I staked out a prime location on the hill and watched none other than Chris Horner take the honors after effectively doing hill repeats on that beast for 45 minutes.   For a day, it was our own little slice of pro racing with European-style crowds.  The race claims to be the hardest crit in the US and despite not having seen every crit in the US, I can confidently say there’s a non-zero chance that they are right.

Having moved away from the area in 2004 we haven’t seen the race in ages, but we always follow it with great interest.  It was with delight that we noticed that Velonews recently posted a preview wherein it claimed that the this year’s edition would be particularly selective, with some climbing added by introducing a stage in my favorite old Ardenne-like training region near Menomonie, Wisconsin.

I did, however, notice a glaring error in the VeloNews report:

…a rule banning aero gear in Wednesday’s six-mile time trial should make the race tigher. Race organizers have gone “Eddy Merckx-style” for this year’s race in hopes of leveling the playing field for lower budget squads.

Surely this is a typographical error and what they intended to say was, “Rule 5-Style”.  But, given how easily Merckx and Rule 5 might be interchanged, I can understand the mistake.  I just don’t want to see them make a habit of such things.

Sean Kelly -1988 photo:Barry Sandland

This photographer knew the picture that people would remember and that would shine a light into Sean Kelly’s character wasn’t of his face; the story is all below. These are legs only a cyclist could love.

In 1988 these legs won Paris-Nice for the seventh time, Gent-Wevelgem and his only Grand Tour Victory, the Vuelta a España, at that time, held in April. He raced to win from Paris-Nice in March to Lombardia in October with no peaking, or vacations, just single minded ambition.

You have to stay with the lithe Spanish climbers to win Vuelta. Kelly’s legs show no extra fat and no lack of might.

There he sits on the top tube of his Vitus 979 Aluminum framed race bike, answering questions in his hard- to- decipher Irish brogue. Even in black and white, one can see he is deeply tanned. No sunscreen and no Look pedals for Sean- he was possibly the last man in the peloton to switch. He always rode a bike that looked too small and cramped. Perhaps this wouldn’t have worked for anyone else but how does one argue with his method?

For all The Rules followers, study the socks. Ponder carefully, for this is what yours should look like: white and the perfect height. This is the way to set off tan, veiny, incredibly powerful legs. Do your legs look like these? No, I didn’t think so, but these socks would be a start.

The Rules readers might also study the gearing; maybe a 23-tooth sprocket as his largest on his seven speed freewheel and 52 and 42 chain rings up front. This must have been a very hilly course. Rule 5 was his middle name.

For my money, American writer Robin Magowan‘s books and articles about this cycling era are without peer; his summation of Kelly is perfect.

It is customary to talk of Kelly as quintessentially an Irish rider. For my part, though, I think it helps to place Kelly better as a cyclist to see him as the last of the Flemish riders. This is usually a title associated with the post-war rider, Briek Schotte who has become appropriately enough the man in day-to-day charge of the de Gribaldy teams. As exemplified by Schotte it stood for a certain type of mentality, willing to suffer, narrowly focused, and hard, hard, hard. Kelly had all this in him from his Irish small farm background: the outside loo; the dogs that have to be chained before you can step from your car; the one career possible, as a bricklayer on a construction site, stretching away and away into the grey mists. On the positive side, along with the self-reliance, came a physical strength that even by peasant standards is impressive. In a profession of iron wills, there is no one harder.

Book review: The death of Marco Pantani by Matt Rendell

It’s always a let down for a fan to realise his or her idol is not all that they were held up to be.  And while I was somewhat a fan of Marco Pantani, it was neither a surprise nor a let-down to read about his troubled life, and his subsequent sad, lonely death.

It wasn’t a surprise, or a let-down, to read that possibly his whole career was fueled by a dependence on recombinant EPO, among other performance enhancers.  I knew it while watching him win the Tour in 98, I knew it when I watched him vainly struggle to hold the wheel of a super-charged Armstrong in the 2000 Tour, and I knew it when I saw him valiantly try to re-capture his former climbing prowess against the lesser gifted, yet somehow superior Simoni and Garzelli et al in the 2003 Giro, his ultimate swansong as it would eventually transpire.

Did I care that he was loaded?  No.  All his contemporaries were, it was no secret.  Did I get an invigorating thrill from watching him fly up iconic mountain passes while holding the bars in the drops, sitting, standing, always accelerating, striving to get to the summit as quickly as possible, to shorten the suffering as he often stated?  Hell yes.  He was an entertainer.  He was a craftsman.  An aesthete.  And he was a loner, foregoing any real support from a team that lacked talent and panache, something that probably pleased him as he loved to be the centre of attention.

And just as he rode alone, he lived alone.  Although he was surrounded by an entourage who all claimed to be doing their best for him, ultimately he was neglected by them, and left to die a lonely, depressed, paranoid and disturbed man.

The Death of Marco Pantani doesn’t try to dispel the notion that his career was based on deception, nor does it try to glorify it.  It is a stark assessment of the facts, and only the staunchest of tifosi could argue against those facts.  But it still hits hard to read of such a spectacular fall from grace, the downward spiral from the pinnacle of the sport, and indeed from the pinnacle of celebrity, to a demise that one would normally associate with that of a rock star or actor.  Maybe that’s how he saw himself, and how he thought it would be befitting for him to be remembered, like an Elvis, a Jim Morrison or even a James Dean.

Just as we still buy CDs by The Doors, and watch Viva Las Vegas or Rebel Without a Cause and take pleasure from the experience, so too will we remember Les Duex Alpes in 98, or l’Alpe d’Huez in 95 and 97, not because we were watching a flawed individual, but because we were being entertained by a consumate showman, a master of his craft at the height of his profession.

And for that I can only be appreciative.  RIP Marco.