Self-Chosen: Il Pirata & Il Giro
We continue our Six Days of the Giro series with a look at the troubled bond between Marco Pantani and the Giro.
Some were meant to be tormented, as though it were preordained that their brilliance should be balanced with fatal flaws. These are tortured souls, whose dramatic highs are equalled only by the devastating depths of their lows.
Cycling drinks its fill of these personalities, and climbing seems to attract more than its fair share. Shakespeare himself couldn’t divine a better premise; the discipline most focussed on suffering in a sport totally focussed on suffering will always attract the most enigmatic of sorts. Charley Gaul, José MarÃa Jiménez, Marco Pantani; the list goes on.
Italy’s geography seems to lend itself to climbing and therefor suffering. There are mountains from north to south, and it being a narrow stip of a country, there is no occasion to avoid them for very long before any parcourse is once again forced to go over them. Already Monday’s Stage 3 of this year’s race is a lumpy thing with two categorized climbs and Stage 4 has an uphill finish. This will be a race for those able to suffer.
Pantani in particular seemed inextricably bound to the Giro. Even before winning in 1998, he found himself winning some of the hardest mountain stages, though his temperament dictated that for every great day on the bike, he would be pay at least V bad ones. In 1999, he looked to be the sure winner before registerring a hematocrit over the UCI 50% limit at Madonna di Campiglio. In 2000, he returned once again, but was far from his best and rode in support of his teammate and eventual winner, Stefano Garzelli.
He struggled on for a few more years, but always tried to shine in Italy. In 2003, in a heart-wrenching display of defiance, he gave the last of himself in vain before disappearing from the sport for good.
It reminds me of a song written by a man who’s life was similarly tormented, Layne Staley. Perhaps Layne and Pantani were two parts of the same whole.
My pain is self-chosen
At least, so the prophet says
– Layne Stayey, River of Deceit
Maybe Layne could have been a Cyclist in another life.
*Sigh* I miss watching Pantani grinding himself to bits in the high mountains. Rocket fuelled or not, it was fantastic to watch.
2 gentlemen both sorely missed.
Above was a great album.
Er…suddenly getting a massive malware warning from google chrome when trying to get on the site….does not come up from iPad….any ideas?
Meh… I enjoyed watching him at the time but I don’t buy into the Pantani worship, especially if people aren’t also prepared to overlook Valverde, Vino etc for their sins (and I’m not suggesting they should be overlooked, just that double standards seem to be applied). I can’t look at any of his performances without wondering what he was juiced on.
In fact I find it very hard to have much sympatico for anyone of that era, or any of the big names at least. Basically I stop caring at Riis and restart maybe with Sastre.
“Wondering what he was juiced on”? EPO, & later cocaine. Stop wondering. Pantani would’ve been an unrivaled grimpeur even without EPO, but not in that era. People are fascinated by him still because he was a tortured genius & because he was taken from us far, far before his time. Read Rendell’s ‘The Death of Marco Pantani.’ He was an undeniably fascinating man &, “juiced” or not, one of the last & greatest examples of a fearless, instinctive, attacking climber
@Deakus Yep. I’ve got the same going on from home PC. Anyone else??
@Alex
Yep, got an unsafe site warning, using Safari on a Mac :0s
As for Pantani, loved him at the time, the question ‘can I hang on all the way to the top’ just never seem to occur to him. In retrospect, his appeal has waned, but then you could say that about a lot of riders of that era.
@Deakus, @Alex, @Geraint
We were attacked again last night around 3am Pacific time. The site was cleaned again immediately and I’ve been working hard to get better counter-measures in place.
We take your safety extremely seriously and rest assured we have it under control. These attacks are relatively benign and center on pages that aren’t used. The worst that would happen, apparently, is that if someone browse to one of these pages, they would get redirected to a website selling condominiums. What a hassle.
@frank
Okeydoke – Google has given us a clean bill of health again. Thanks for your support!
What an incredible photo! It looks more like a painting.
Hmm, an attack on the site. Guess that’s why I got that message. Thanks for all your work, Frank! I wasn’t necessarily concerned about anything more than having access here…
How’s this for an introduction: I first heard “Would” from Alice in Chains when I visited my older brother when he was a sophomore in college and I was in 8th grade. Sometime around midnight we were in the basement of his fraternal house listening to the song and throwing full cups of beer at the ceiling. Oh boy, the height of stupid excess for a young dude. “God, I want to go to college!”
How about today? Betancur into the woods, Scarponi smashes off his RD and kicks bidons about, Ryder attacks everyone, Cavendish out the back after a superb spring in Stage 1. Third stage and the Giro is proving its awesomeness!
@Ron – Spot on mate. Some of the descents on the Giro are friggin amazing. I rode the TT stage that Dirty Den Menchov won a few years back in the Cinque Terre. I still can’t believe a bunch of them (especially the silent menchov) didn’t fly off into the sea. So frigging technical and surfaced to racetrack style smoothness so you could really clart it. Scary!
@frank
Thanks for the fix. I was a wee bit worried then figured that you’d get it sorted as you don’t like people messing with your baby (metaphorically speaking)!.
@frank Double check your .htaccess or any other configuration files. Hackers sometimes install a backdoor.
Or, once you have a clean state, put your whole site in Git. Then you can tell if any changes were made, anywhere.
Funny, I was just reminiscing with a friend today about how I bought these aero bars because of Pantani. Had them mounted on my 1998 steel Vitali with Campagnolo Veloce. I think I still have them. Are they compliant with The Rules? I doubt that they’d work on my Cinelli with the flat top bars I have.
@frank – the link to the YouTube vid isn’t workign for me.
@TBONE – I think Spinaci’s look pro. Kinda like Scott Drop-In’s (but maybe more useful?)
Dirty little drugs cheat. Would we know of him without the cheating and the OD? Why do his records still stand? His ride up Alp d Huez, he may as well been riding a motorbike!
@piwakawaka
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.
@G’rilla
There is a kit out there that takes advantage of a security hole in the WordPress plugin named mm_forms_community. The vulnerability allows attackers to append garbage to any php and js files on the server that have anonymous write access. If you are using mm_forms_community, then remove it right away. The site is probably on a shared server, and it’s likely that another WordPress site on the server has compromised, so you won’t be able to remove the security hole if you’re not the server admin. To prevent your site from being hacked over and over again you should remove anonymous write access from all php and js files. It’s easier to remove anonymous write access from the folders. During normal operation WordPress doesn’t need write access. The only time you should enable write access is when you’re installing a WordPress update, after which you should remove it again.
@The Grande Fondue
Youtube link not working for me either.
Good call. During yesterday’s 115km/2000m of climbing sufferfest some buddies and I rode past some tryfags, they were all getting aero. We got into an echelon (all three of us)and did this, chuckling amongst ourselves. Of course it was all lost on the try-plebes.
@TBONE
Oh, in that case, what an inspiration to us all, the way he rode was amazing…
@G’rilla, @Apex Nadir
Cheers guys.
I keep the whole site in an SVN repo but I’ll check out GIT as well; maybe I can work G’rilla’s angle to be more proactive about unauthorized changes. I have write perms battoned down, but will try the route of locking down even more. Thankfully, don’t have mm_forms_community and we have enough traffic that I went dedicated server a long time ago, which means I have root access. Still, Dreamhost seems to have more trouble than most with this stuff, so it might be time to move on.
@TBONE so you were on the phantoms in a crosswind? Clever.
Likewise, link fails to open.
Bit worried about the work website, also a WordPress item, as I had one ‘unpublished’ bit of spam appear last week, particularly after the problems here. I’ve learned not to say ‘probably nothing’.
Poor Marco. All too familiar with the ‘tormented souls’ state of being.
@Ron: Crazy awesome stage, indeed, and more of the same tomorrow morning.
@TBONE “tryfags”…really? I expect better from you guys…:(
@FNG I have read the book and I still don’t but in to it all.
He got carried away with his success and surrounded himself with leeches and hangers-on who did nothing to prevent his self-destruction and jumped like rats as soon as the ship started to sink. It’s a familiar story – footballers like George Best or Paul Gascoigne, or the currently unfolding trajectory of Justin Bieber. Some people might call it tortured genius,but it could equally just be stupid.
if there’s anything to be said for Armstrong, COTHO that he was, it’s that he had a plan and made damn sure it worked, although in the end he over-reached himself.
Would he have been an unrivalled grimpeur in another era, maybe – we’ll never know will we ? It’s probably a lot easier to have that instinct to attack and not be dropped when you’re pumped up on EPO. Without it he may have been the type of rider who has one or two spectacular summit finishes each year but would never have won a GT.
@ChrisO Just like we can mark Pantani’s decline from the the day he was booted from the Giro, maybe people will identify a tipping point in the history of Velominati as the day when someone on this site somehow connected Justin Bieber with Il Pirata.
@Marcus Bieber, Gazza and Il Pirata – there’s a dinner party.
”tryfags” Are you fucking are you kidding me! I am this close to being done with anybody in cycling!
Errr, sense of proportion alert…
One person, a relatively recent contributor at that, makes an inappropriate remark and first it’s “you guys” as if were some collective choice of words, then it’s the fault of the whole of cycling and everybody in it.
I sincerely hope you don’t have any red buttons under your control @coulee country @anthony sands
I’m not endorsing Tbone’s homophobic choice of language BTW, obviously the appropriate term would be tritards.
@ChrisO I find the suffix ‘tard extremely offensive. But fuck, who am i to complain?
I must say though, having ridden a dirty tri bike a bit lately, I have noticed a lot of roadies suddenly develop a pathological need to re-pass you if you pass them. Far more than happens when on a road bike. Weird.
I have no patience for homophobia!
@Marcus Yes that was the point… replacing one offensive word with another. It’s irony innit.
But at least you only blamed me, not the entire cycling world.
And I’m probably also guilty as charged in re-passing. I did it to someone just last week – I don’t know what came over me – I was out on a quiet ride and some bloke on tribars came past and I just had to shadow (not draft) him to see if he could keep the pace up and then pass him when he ran out of puff.
Having said that I suspect it works the other way too. Would he have been so keen to come past me had I been on a tri bike ? Clearly he was going at a speed higher than he could maintain.
@frank
Thanks very much, Frank – both for both your efforts and for the reassurance :0)
@frank
Good stuff…what if I actually want a condominium!!…. (cue relevant emoticon!!)
@Coulee country
*cough…..Rule #42, personally I prefer Tritards to Trifags, but hey, each to their own…
@TBONE
Funny story, not a cool word. Reign that shit in.
@anthony sands
Be my guest…you obviously don’t understand some of the irony here….
I think Tri -Dorks, is better. I love cycling like crazy but shit like that bumm’s me out!
Thats not Irony. The use of that word is derogatory.
@TBONE Sort yourself out. You’re confusing me, were the aero people you encountered wannabe junior pupils in the private school system, aspiring freshmen in some military academy or were you actually trying to be offensive towards tri-athletes? Eitherway remember Rule #43.
@Coulee country, @anthony sands lighten up, poor choice of words but I doubt it was intended as homophobic.
I ended up riding with a couple of lads on Sunday for part of the route. We were all headed in the same direction and at roughly the same speed so it made sense to take pulls (if anything I had to work a bit harder to keep up on the hills). One of them had aero bars, a skin suit and a tendency to weave about a bit which meant that I gave him a bit more space when he was on the front. Other than that he still seemed to be pushing on the pedals in the same way as the everyone else.
Enjoy this clip, with it’s great tribute song to Marco by French band Les Wampas, who were clearly fans. Not sure why watching and listening to this gets me all emotional. Rule #5 Mike, Rule #5 !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx5Zer4XJkg&feature=fvst
@Deakus
Then make sure that it is made of quality latex!
I think this really reflects the way you view the word, it says more about the reader than the writer…if you want to get technical.
re·tard 1 (r
-tärd
)
v. re·tard·ed, re·tard·ing, re·tards
v.tr.
To cause to move or proceed slowly; delay or impede.
v.intr.
To be delayed.
n.
1. A slowing down or hindering of progress; a delay.
2. Music A slackening of tempo.
[Middle English retarden, from Old French retarder, from Latin retard
re : re-, re- + tard
re, to delay (from tardus, slow).]
re·tard
er n.
Personally, and I cannot speak for others I would regard all triathletes as falling in to this category because they are slow to see the light and follow the V.
I also understand the slang context of this, but I choose not to regard it in this way because that would be cruel and insensitive.
I get a bit fed up with everybody choosing to get “offended” by everything these days, it is like the word has been highjacked by an over politically correct and rather zealous set of people that feel they own the rights to be offended by everything in life that does not quite meet their own personal expectations on behaviour. I include in this category religious fundamentalists (of all pesuasions), those who are overly politically correct and numerous others.
The slur sits within your mind, not necessarily those who posted it.
If you truly believe that the poster was a homophobe, or trying to joke at mentally retarded people, then you probably have the right to be offended….but everyone else does not have to get “onboard” with your offence….we choose to see what we choose to see…
I choose to believe that the poster was using common modern slang to indicate the slowness of mind of those who choose to swim and run when riding, rather than following the pure path…..(tongue in cheek), that is what this site is all about.
Any statement is only ever offensive to the person who perceives it to be so….I think a little perspective is required here. Obviously if someone posted that they thought all mentally slow people should be shot, that is not open to much interpretation and I would find their view offensive…but some may not and I approve of their right to think this way. Privately I would think them a small minded biggot….publicly I would probably just ignore them and not give the attention or publicity for their hateful rhetoric that they are so obviously seeking. That would be to fan the flames of intolerance.
I have rambled enough….this hits the nail on the head….
@Deakus hey fuckwit-it was me who raised the “offensive” regarding the use of ‘tard, and it was only in conversation with @ChrisO. The other guy had a problem with the use of “fag”.
I am stupider for having read your post.
@anthony sands
Cycling is riddled with champions and idiots. Focus on the champions and ignore the idiots. Deakus doesn’t completely understand cycling either. Or when to hold off.
Henceforth I shall no longer call Triathletes ‘tryfags’. For my punishment for speaking ill of Triathletes I will be wearing Campagnolo compression socks and LED lit compression arm warmers in every race I ride in.
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=72768
http://www.gearbuzz.com/deal/36282/50-percent-off-glimmer-gear-unisex-led-compression-arm-sleeves/national
@Marcus
The point was a generic one…your failure to grasp that already makes you stupid enough please don’t get any worse on my account. The point stands and I have nothing further to add.
@ChrisO
I think its very easy to look at addicts and dopers and say they’re weak and they should be cast aside, and that’s a perfectly valid position to take.
For me, living with a woman who’s spent here life working in Public Health and Epidemiology, I’ve come to appreciate how much environmental factors have to do with these things and truly how far from being a matter of black and white, right and wrong these things usually are.
For Pantani, he was a great rider and exciting to watch and that’s a big part of the equation. But he was also part of the 90’s culture where doping was widespread and completely pushed under the carpet – aside from Festina, no one was talking about it and no one had been caught.
What breaks my heart – and what I believe broke Pantani’s heart – was that he was singled out at a time when virtually everyone was doing the same thing. I look back and see a man who was confused and betrayed by his world, and he tried for 5 years to fight his way back – the sport turned its back on him, but he never turned his back on it.
That puts him in a different light than Vino, Valvecap, Contador, etc.
I do appreciate you holding the line on that entire era, though I’m surprised to see you open the door on Sastre, a ride who was only successful under Riis’s tutelage and who had strong (alleged) ties to Fuentes.
@Ron
I had a similar introduction, except it was with We Die Young from Facelift. That opening riff is so badass, and I was like – wait, these guys are 19?
Nipple lube… it was intended in an offensive but ironic sense, by using it as a replacement for the word tryfags. As in “There are only two things I can’t stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.”
Or my personal favourite example – I can’t remember where it was from – but there’s a Peter Jackson remake of the classic film Dambusters, with script by Stephen Fry. In the original (and factual) version Commander Guy Gibson’s dog is called Nigger so obviously it had to be renamed (Digger). There was a very funny satire in Onion style which had the dog renamed Cuntface to avoid causing offence. And you have to imagine Stephen Fry calling a black labrador cuntface to really appreciate it.
Anyhow… sorry I mentioned it really.