Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist

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!

He's in and out of the saddle. He's almost sprinting up the hill here.

Marco Pantani anche oggi ha dimostrato di essere un fuoriclasse.

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.

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.

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.

He has learned how to suffer again.

Look at the face on Marco Pantani.

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.

Look at this crowd now, because they love him so much.

I almost felt...

not worthy to be in his company.

Marco Pantani will not be climbing the highest mountains

on the Giro d'Italia.

Disperazione, rabbia contro una decisione ritenuta ingiusta.

Pantani has come back to the Tour de France!

Now he's winning again!

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.

Three weeks, thousands of miles

and the yellowjersey at the end of it.

It's the only sporting event in the world

where it's long enough that you'd probably need a haircut halfway through.

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."

There's no doubt that the mountains

give those stage races their drama.

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.

You want to stop all the time.

You're unable to. You have to push on.

And so it's where the pure, raw talent gets to come out

and gets to separate itself from the rest of the riders.

Mountains were what gave the race its flavour...

...because you could see these men suffering.

- (CHEERING) - (APPLAUSE)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Indurain was scientific.

Pantani rode from pure instinct.

His descending was stunning.

He'd just hook his rear end over the saddle,

to become as aerodynamic as possible.

We're talking 80, 90, 1 00 kilometres an hour.

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.

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.

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.

- (CHEERING) - (APPLAUSE)

Pantani è scattato all'inizio della salita...

Terzo, Marco Pantani della Rinascita...

Ora coi primi is portano Andreani, Settembrini e Pantani.

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)

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.

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.

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.

It's steep, an average of 8% gradient.

It's actually like a bullring.

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.

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.

The parting of the waters for Marco Pantani.

What a marvellous moment for him.

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.

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.

Marco Pantani può alzare il braccio. Vince.

To be a stage winner in the Tour de France is something very special.

You've established yourself.

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.

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.

He hit the waterbottle

that must've been dropped by one of the other riders.

And it's Marco Pantani, the great climber,

in collision with Alberto Elli.

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.

And suddenly there's a car coming towards them.

That was where it all went wrong.

- (BRAKES SCREECH) - (CRASH)

Attenzione, c'è stato un incidente sulla strada. Ciclisti a terra.

Per favore, attenzione...

The police hadn't closed down the roads properly.

C'è stato un incidente sulla strada. Ripeto, incidente sulla strada

con feriti gravi. Ciclisti a terra.

There's a terrible, terrible impact

and that is, possibly, Pantani's career over.

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.

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.

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.