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.
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@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.