Let me write today about a really fascinating topic in sports. The Faded Prospect. It is almost an archetype in sportsm that's why I use capital letters. The notion of seeing a world of unlimited potential for greatness in a young athlete, only to see him never realize that potential, has captivated many sports writers. And for me personally, I think all of sports would be much less interesting if all talented athletes just become training-addicts, and hard work alone determines how far an athlete gets.
Sometimes, it's just more fun, more interesting (both good and bad), to follow the mega-talents that never make it to the all-time Pantheon of their respective sports. I am really fascinating with this concept, and the length of this blog post will certainly reflect that. Bear with me, if you will.
All sports have mega-prospects. Young athletes who grow up with a recognizable natural gift for his sport. There are even a few who have all-world talents in several sports; many who saw him in his youth swear Allen Iverson would have made a great NFL quarterback, and some even made the pros in more than one sport. That's a cross-athletic gift, a purely bodily strength, and sometimes specialized skill within one sport just makes it look like an athlete was born to perform right where he is, in that one sport. Often, he might really be born just for that, as many of these athletes' flawed personalities and private lives have shown.
As so many other things, this is not exclusive to sports. It's just that sports are so well-structured in many ways that they make it easier to discuss abstract subjects like not living up to expectations, burning out, etc.
Basically, there can be three main reasons why a prospect fades away:
Lack of commitment
The big one for many, and the most frustrating one to watch. If only Jan Ullrich had trained half as hard as Lance Armstrong, Armstrong's biggest achievement might very well have been the Flèche Wallone he won in 1996. If only Tracy McGrady's hobby hadn't been sleeping, there's a good chance he would be battling it out with Kobe for supremacy over the era right now, and, well the Big Deal Syndrome is well-known in American sports: once an athlete gets the big payday, his commitment will very often drop. So there are many, many greatly talented athletes in this group.
That means that this group of faded prospects will often get some results to back up their promising skill set along the way. Sometimes Jan Ullrich by accident hit his top form (usually toward the end of the seasons), and you can hardly say a man who was a point of refernce in cycling for a decade was truly a wasted talent. In the context of less-than-stellar work ethics, people often mention Shaquille O'Neal, who undeniably had the talent to become the greatest center ever. He wasn't, but still wound up maybe the fifth-best center ever, a four-time NBA champion and an all-time great. The boundaries between decent careers and disappointment are fluid in this group. Talk to Jan Ullrich, I'm sure that is exactly what frustrates him about his own career.
Flaw in skills
This is a technical aspect of a talented athlete not living up to his potential: if he simply has an achilles heel that makes him beatable, and keeps him from true greatness. I've read a lot about Caroline Wozniacki, the Danish tennis girl, and her lack of a super weapon in her battle for Grand Slam titles. She doesn't have that forehand that can finish opponents off, or the killer serve - and that is why she is essentially doomed to mediocrity despite her obvious talent. Speaking of Danes, I still believe Mikkel Kessler was the world's greatest Super Middleweight fighter in 2007-2009. But he couldn't fight dirty, and often got hurt (see below), so he never quite made it to the very top. Abraham Olano was supposed to take over Miguel Indurain's throne atop world cycling in the 1996-1997 seasons, but he lacked Indurain's punch in the mountains, and Olano's greatness never properly materialized.
Athletes who buckle under pressure are even more doomed (though perhaps that is Wozniacki's problem, too). I will maintain that Kamil Stoch could become the greatest ski jumper in the world if only he would stop underperforming in the second round at big event. Dave Winfield was famously known as 'Mr. May', and Andrey Shevchenko, who was one of the great soccer players of the 00's, will forever be remembered for the chances he blew during the great meltdown of AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League final. Clutch inefficiency is mind-crippling, and really hurts a great athlete's chances of being remembered forty years from now. In cycling, Michael Boogerd was one of the finest riders of the mid-90s to mid-00s. There was just one thing he couldn't do - and that was to win!
I also include in this group the athletes whose health or body capacities prevent them from going all the way to all-time greatness. Some make it anyway, such as Marco van Basten, whose four short years at the very top I am not the only to remember fondly. Cut short was also the peak of the prodigious tennis lady Martina Hingis, and Kessler (see above) had setbacks at three of the worst possible times of his career, the worst perhaps being an injured hand on a cold night in Cardiff, Wales.
Honorable mention in this category goes to Alex Zülle, who not only was not a great clutch performer (he often failed to impress when a big race was on the line), but whose poor vision required him to wear thick glasses - which further held him back in rainy or foggy conditions, leading to even more pressure in decisive situations and, well, a pretty ordinary career when you look at it. Zülle, along with his cycling compatriot Tony Rominger, demonstrates very well that the worst skill flaw you can have is bad luck. Somewhere up in Finland, should-be triple Formula One World Champion Kimi Raikkonen is nodding vigorously.
The common thing about these first two points is that athletes can overcome these flaws and still enjoy plenty of success (see below). They might not reach their full potential, and it is annoying in some cases to watch athletes not live up to what you - and the rest of the world - expect from them. But such is life, and the reason why people, myself included, are so fascinated with the concept of the Faded Prospect is the following category:
Demons
It is an appropriately hazy category, as this is often what is alluded to when analysts can't - or won't - explain what is the matter with a very gifted young man. Let's just go ahead and call it the Tyson Factor already - physically Mike Tyson might be the greatest fighter ever, and I don't care for analyses according to which 'stupidity' killed off Tyson's greatness. If you have ever heard Mike Tyson explain boxing, talk about boxing, analyze boxing, you know that he is not a stupid man at all. He just had some demons, intangible and impossible to get rid of, holding him back in essential ways.
An athlete's background can often supplant his later greatness, and it's very frequent in American sports that athletes who grew up in unfavorable conditions are later haunted by them. Why are there so many shooting incidents in the NFL? Demons. Plaxico Burress, Marvin Harrison and others might have made it anyway, but they had their problems, and one would imagine such things have held hundreds of others back.
Plain drug abuse has haunted sports too, of course. Robbie Fowler or Paul Merson in soccer, and Marco Pantani in cycling (though I believe Pantani made the most of his career). Mental illness has also hit athletes, and guys like José Maria Jimenez (cycling) or Justin Duchscherer (baseball). And a combination of all these things make for the most interesting faded prospect I know of: cycling's Frank Vandenbroucke. Vandenbroucke could have dominated cycling in any aspect since he burst onto the scene in 1997 - he could ride classics and beat Jalabert and Bartoli, he could win the medium stage races such as Paris-Nice, and in the Vuelta of 1999, he showed a tantalizing flash of what could have been when he went all Eddy Merckx on the peloton on the way to a great stage win at Avila. But his downfall, which really started after the World Championships at Verona that he would have dominated had he not broken both his arms early on in the race (!), and it didn't end until he was found dead at a Senegalese beach resort in October of 2009.
Vandenbroucke's story crystallizes everything that is fascinating about the Faded Prospect. All-time talent? Check (even Eddy Merckx himself pointed to Vandenbroucke as his successor). Flashes of legendary brilliance? Check (many still believe his 1999 win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège is one of the finest editions of that race in recent times). Demons? Oh yeah, you betcha. Everything from PEDs to recreational drugs, a stormy relationship with no fewer than two models in 18 months, to the Belgian media, the police, and clinical depressions, attempted murder, attempted suicide several times - and that rather depressing list goes on and on, and even includes puzzling sightings at amateur races in Italy, riding under a fake name.
Frank Vandenbroucke died at 34. As an athlete, he had two seasons, 1998 and 1999, where he bagged some good results on a consistent basis. But consistency was never his strength; after a bout with depression in 2000, he practically disappeared for a couple of years - and characteristically showed up in the winning break of the 2004 Tour of Flanders all of a sudden. Out of training and unable to out-sprint Peter Van Petegem, he took second, and never made it back to the elite again. Yet he will be remembered, primarily for what he could have been than for what he was.
Now, there are three principal ways a Faded Prospect can go, somewhat mirroring the three main reasons for fading in the first place:
He can become ordinary, have an unremarkable career.
This is both the most frequent way to make a career away from the all-time greatness a prospect was destined for, and maybe the most depressing way to end up (from a purely athletic perspective). Both basketball (Tim Thomas, Lamar Odom, etc.) and cycling (Alex Zülle, Michael Boogerd, etc.), and certainly other sports, are littered with this type of cancelled greatness.
Cancelled greatnes characterizes another one of cycling's mega-prospects of the early 90's, namely Eugeni Berzin, who burst onto the scene with a dominant Giro d'Italia win in 1994, as well as Liège-Bastogne-Liège that year, only to show exactly two flashes of brilliance (one in 1995 and one in 1996) for the rest of his career. There are those who in hindsight believe Berzin was never all that good, and that his exceptional 1994 season was mainly due to his Gewiss team's trail blazing in the PED department. But nevertheless he was up against some riders who were not exactly using yoohoo and skittles either, and he did win in remarkable style. And it was a great shame to see him end his career, a very unremarkable and beleaguered 30-year-old in the year 2000 - ironically over a PED suspension.
In the same way, I'm sure there are many boxing fans who would have liked Mike Tyson to just call it a career after it was clear he could no longer beat fighters of Evander Holyfield's caliber in the mid-90's. No matter how short your time is at the very top, it just looks better to go out while you're still close to the top.
He can show inconsistent flashes of brilliance over an extended period of time,
but never achieve consistent greatness that puts him into consideration for the all-time Pantheon of his sport. Van Basten essentially made his legend with one great goal (that's shorting him quite a bit, but that is what most remember about him), and many athletes just have trouble staying healthy enough to be great for a long time. In baseball, the faded pitching prospect can still go out and throw a no-hitter; consistency is not the only way to greatness in pitching. The Yankees probably wouldn't have won the 2009 World Series with the steady finesse pitcher Mike Mussina as their number two starter instead of the volatile power pitcher A.J. Burnett, who produced three fantastic starts when it mattered the most.
An athlete capable of going about his trade like this can command serious interest and money from clubs. But it can also hold a talented athlete back. Why don't Arsenal just get rid of Marouane Chamakh, whom they're scarcely using themselves; trade him, sell him, or loan him out? Because they know what he is capable of, and don't want him pulling a three-goal performance against them in the Premier League.
He can flame out completely.
Again, the most interesting way to go out. Frank Vandenbroucke is the prototypical flameout; I don't believe the details were
fredag den 4. september 2020
Three Days in 1994: How awesome Miguel Indurain actually was
He had class. Cycling was a gentleman's sport back then, something which Lance Armstrong changed for good.
The 1994 Tour was decided in three stages that might have been the most dominant three-day stretch by any rider in cycling history.
Indurain produced three or four really brilliant time trialling performances over his reign at the Tour, but the one in 1994 may be the most impressive one of them all. In '92, he beat the second-placed rider, De Las Cuevas, by 3'00" at Luxembourg, his biggest margin of victory of all the time trials, but while there were some major names further down the list (Bugno at 3'41", Lemond at 4'04"), his competition in Bergerac for the 1994 Tour counted a much more complete rider on his best form (Tony Rominger, whom Indurain beat by 2'00"). Rominger's form for the '94 Tour can be discussed at length, but the fact remains that Rominger himself beat the next rider, De Las Cuevas, by 2'40" himself, leaving third-placed De Las Cuevas a whopping 4'40" behind Indurain. In one time trial! Chris Boardman, who later that year would win the Time Trial World Championship, finished fifth at 5'27". That's almost five and a half minutes, against a very motivated time trial specialist who a week earlier had shown he had great form.
Rominger began talking of a knee injury and bad health even before the time trial, but if your knees are not healthy, you don't beat Chris Boardman or the 1994 De Las Cuevas by that much. You just don't. So yes, I am calling 'bad excuse' on Rominger here. Just like with Lance Armstrong in the 2003 time trial, but that's another story.
The time gaps, even for a 64 km-time trial, are mind-boggling, and back then, a time trial that long was the norm in a Grand Tour, so they were hardly because of the monstrosity of the route. The Bergerac time trial in 1994 was probably Miguel Indurain's mega-apex as a time triallist. The Formula at its very best. As I said, whether to consider this time trial more impressive than his '92 thrashing of the field at Luxembourg depends on how you read Rominger's form, but aside from pointing to the time Rominger put into the following riders, I will actually contend that Rominger's poor form in the following mountain stages came from his defeat in the time trial.
Before the climb up to the Hautacam started two days later, Rominger knew he was up against a superior opponent. Indurains unexpected display of power up the Hautacam just showed everybody that this was an improved Indurain, not content to sit back and observe, but actually willing to launch pre-emptive strikes against his opponents. The next day, when Richard Virenque introduced himself to the world, Indurain laid down the law again, but in a more understated way, up to Luz Ardiden. He could once again control the pace of the lead group, and maintain initiative against a strong contingent of mountain specialists. This was Indurain the field general, and turned out to be the day he effectively eliminated Rominger, made sure Ugrumov would never be a serious threat, and kept Pantani within what was manageable, too.
Those three stages of the '94 Tour made Indurain's legacy as a champion. If he had continued his Formula from '92 and '93, he would rightfully have been considered a boring winner. The rest of the '94 Tour was boring, but that was because none of the contenders believed they could challenge Indurain. Rominger had never given up completely in '93, no matter his bad luck along the way, and Chiappucci never gave up, period. But mentally, Indurain had them all beaten after these three stages, and the Alpine stages of the '94 Tour reflected that. The latter part of the race still saw some great racing, but it was for second place, and everybody knew it.
They also changed the way Indurain went about his business the following year. Indurain's 1995 win has often been analyzed as 'more of the same', but in essence, that win was in no way dependent on time trial dominance. Bjarne Riis lost 1'00" to Indurain - over the combined two time trials of the race, but it was in the mountains that Indurain really crushed his opponents. Namely on the road to La Plagne, where Indurain might have produced his career-defining performance. He didn't win the stage, but notice how he just rides away from the others without actually attacking. It was no contest.
Indurain, after seeing in 1994 that he was able to do it, was simply more aggressive in '95. His surprise attack in Liège has been interpreted as fear of Rominger's and Berzin's time trialling abilities, but in the past Indurain still would have waited and let the others make the first move. Indurain's win in 1995 was never as much a sure thing as it had been in '94, especially with the ONCE team trying to out-maneuver him, but it was often more enjoyable to watch, because the competition depended more on wits than on power to compete with Miguel, which prompted some unusual reactions, too.
Indurain was also a legendary race manager, masterminding his successor Olano's World Championship in 1995, but I will maintain that he is actually underappreciated. And for those three days during the 1994 Tour, he would have been a match for any cyclist in history. Put him up against the 1997 Jan Ullrich, and Ullrich would have had trouble on the cold and foggy climb up to Hautacam. Put him up against the 2001 Lance Armstrong, and Lance would have been crushed like a bug on the time trial. Put him up against Eddy Merckx, and Eddy would have destroyed his own chances going forward by launching an ill-advised attack early on the Luz Ardiden stage to make up for the time he had lost in the time trial. Ultimately, anyone would have been powerless against the Indurain of those three stages, July 11th to July 15th, 1994.
The 1994 Tour was decided in three stages that might have been the most dominant three-day stretch by any rider in cycling history.
Indurain produced three or four really brilliant time trialling performances over his reign at the Tour, but the one in 1994 may be the most impressive one of them all. In '92, he beat the second-placed rider, De Las Cuevas, by 3'00" at Luxembourg, his biggest margin of victory of all the time trials, but while there were some major names further down the list (Bugno at 3'41", Lemond at 4'04"), his competition in Bergerac for the 1994 Tour counted a much more complete rider on his best form (Tony Rominger, whom Indurain beat by 2'00"). Rominger's form for the '94 Tour can be discussed at length, but the fact remains that Rominger himself beat the next rider, De Las Cuevas, by 2'40" himself, leaving third-placed De Las Cuevas a whopping 4'40" behind Indurain. In one time trial! Chris Boardman, who later that year would win the Time Trial World Championship, finished fifth at 5'27". That's almost five and a half minutes, against a very motivated time trial specialist who a week earlier had shown he had great form.
Rominger began talking of a knee injury and bad health even before the time trial, but if your knees are not healthy, you don't beat Chris Boardman or the 1994 De Las Cuevas by that much. You just don't. So yes, I am calling 'bad excuse' on Rominger here. Just like with Lance Armstrong in the 2003 time trial, but that's another story.
The time gaps, even for a 64 km-time trial, are mind-boggling, and back then, a time trial that long was the norm in a Grand Tour, so they were hardly because of the monstrosity of the route. The Bergerac time trial in 1994 was probably Miguel Indurain's mega-apex as a time triallist. The Formula at its very best. As I said, whether to consider this time trial more impressive than his '92 thrashing of the field at Luxembourg depends on how you read Rominger's form, but aside from pointing to the time Rominger put into the following riders, I will actually contend that Rominger's poor form in the following mountain stages came from his defeat in the time trial.
Before the climb up to the Hautacam started two days later, Rominger knew he was up against a superior opponent. Indurains unexpected display of power up the Hautacam just showed everybody that this was an improved Indurain, not content to sit back and observe, but actually willing to launch pre-emptive strikes against his opponents. The next day, when Richard Virenque introduced himself to the world, Indurain laid down the law again, but in a more understated way, up to Luz Ardiden. He could once again control the pace of the lead group, and maintain initiative against a strong contingent of mountain specialists. This was Indurain the field general, and turned out to be the day he effectively eliminated Rominger, made sure Ugrumov would never be a serious threat, and kept Pantani within what was manageable, too.
Those three stages of the '94 Tour made Indurain's legacy as a champion. If he had continued his Formula from '92 and '93, he would rightfully have been considered a boring winner. The rest of the '94 Tour was boring, but that was because none of the contenders believed they could challenge Indurain. Rominger had never given up completely in '93, no matter his bad luck along the way, and Chiappucci never gave up, period. But mentally, Indurain had them all beaten after these three stages, and the Alpine stages of the '94 Tour reflected that. The latter part of the race still saw some great racing, but it was for second place, and everybody knew it.
They also changed the way Indurain went about his business the following year. Indurain's 1995 win has often been analyzed as 'more of the same', but in essence, that win was in no way dependent on time trial dominance. Bjarne Riis lost 1'00" to Indurain - over the combined two time trials of the race, but it was in the mountains that Indurain really crushed his opponents. Namely on the road to La Plagne, where Indurain might have produced his career-defining performance. He didn't win the stage, but notice how he just rides away from the others without actually attacking. It was no contest.
Indurain, after seeing in 1994 that he was able to do it, was simply more aggressive in '95. His surprise attack in Liège has been interpreted as fear of Rominger's and Berzin's time trialling abilities, but in the past Indurain still would have waited and let the others make the first move. Indurain's win in 1995 was never as much a sure thing as it had been in '94, especially with the ONCE team trying to out-maneuver him, but it was often more enjoyable to watch, because the competition depended more on wits than on power to compete with Miguel, which prompted some unusual reactions, too.
Indurain was also a legendary race manager, masterminding his successor Olano's World Championship in 1995, but I will maintain that he is actually underappreciated. And for those three days during the 1994 Tour, he would have been a match for any cyclist in history. Put him up against the 1997 Jan Ullrich, and Ullrich would have had trouble on the cold and foggy climb up to Hautacam. Put him up against the 2001 Lance Armstrong, and Lance would have been crushed like a bug on the time trial. Put him up against Eddy Merckx, and Eddy would have destroyed his own chances going forward by launching an ill-advised attack early on the Luz Ardiden stage to make up for the time he had lost in the time trial. Ultimately, anyone would have been powerless against the Indurain of those three stages, July 11th to July 15th, 1994.
søndag den 23. februar 2014
The Pain and Sorrow of Cycling: Marco Pantani
I have been writing quite a bit about cycling, and my comeback post I would like to be the start of a little themed series about the Pain and Sorrow of cycling. Cycling might not be a dying sport per se, but it's rapidly become considerably less interesting to watch, for several reasons. These posts are going to be intertwined, and, I hope, give an illustration of the way cycling entertained me in the 1990's in a way it simply fails to do now, and also a few images of the way it went bad - all linked to a series of key personalities of recent cycling history.
Today I'm going to present my analysis of a particular aspect of the EPO era and the aesthetically sad demise of cycling at the turn of the millennium. I'm going to look at the case of Marco Pantani.
Notice how Pantani is riding at this point of his career. As the Danish poet and cycling analyst Jørgen Leth said in his 1994 analysis of Pantani's career limits: 'He sprints away. It isn't toughness or consistency, but pure acceleration'. There's an arythmic element to Pantani's way of attacking a climb in his 1994 incarnation. Tactically, though, Pantani was still a diamond in the rough. His breakthrough on the biggest stage of the season, the Tour de France, came on stage 11 to Hautacam, where Pantani showed a wonderful lack of patience in attacking as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He was crushed, of course, by a legendary performance from Miguel Indurain, whose constrictor-like attack from the head of the field was too much to handle for everybody (except Luc Leblanc who sat on his wheel and outsprinted the big guy for the stage win). Pantani had several of those moments in the 1994 Tour, where mistimed attacks or strategic errors cost him the elusive stage win. On the Mont Ventoux stage, his Carrera team had underestimated Eros Poli's resolve in getting over the hump with a 30-minute lead (but Pantani soared away from the other leading riders on the way up the Bald Giant). He was caught on the descent, but when the same thing happened at l'Alpe d'Huez and for the third day in a row at Val Thorens, it had become a theme of the 1994 Tour de France. This newcomer was the best climber in the world, and apparently it wasn't even close, but he was unable to time his attacks so as to win stages. Pantani finished third overall in that year's Tour de France, and he had played a major role in the animation of a Tour that could have become historically boring after Rominger's demise at Hautacam. There was even talk of creating an 'anti-Indurain route' one of the upcoming years, since Pantani, according to a quick calculation presented, among others, by Jørgen Leth in his 1994 book, would have been the winner of the '94 Tour (ahead of Ugrumov and Indurain), if not for the flat time trial at Bergerac, where Indurain had laid down the law.
I will state the bold claim that Pantani's performance in the 1994 Tour de France was one of the most influential factors of the cycling world in the mid-90s. So much changed because of Pantani's way of attacking the race. Pantani himself realized he needed to win some stages since he was the strongest rider in the mountains. He accomplished this the following year, though it came at the cost of no longer being a factor on overall classification. Miguel Indurain realized there was a new factor in his preparation for the Tour, and the following year he based his victory on unprecedented dominance on a few selected mountain stages (most notably the La Plagne stage, where he put more than two and a half minutes into Pantani), rather than time trial power. And the Tour organizers realized they had had a race in 1994 where several of the strongest riders had virtually been eliminated from serious contention by the long time trial. 1994 thus became the last year where all climbers were knocked out of contention after the time trial; already the following year, the first time trial was shorter and hillier, and in 1996, the mountain time trial made a comeback, and as the first time trial no less.
In 1996, Pantani wasn't able to partake in the mountaneous hodown of the Tour, but he came back after a series of accidents and setbacks in 1997. He was a changed rider.
During the first couple mountain stages of the 1997 Tour de France, Pantani looked like one of the stronger riders in the climbs, but hardly anything exceptional. He didn't have the extra giddyup that had made him the source of cycling romantics three years earlier, and Jan Ullrich's all-around dominance seemed to blur the resurgence of Pantani.
Then this happened. I know, more than anything this time trial was Ullrich's Indurain-esque execution of his competitors' hopes of toppling him that year, but it's also a very clear sign of the appearance of New Pantani. If you compare his performance in this time trial to Ullrich's competitors (Virenque, Riis, Olano), Virenque rode the time trial of his life, not least thanks to his taking Ullrich's wheel on the last third of the course. Pantani lost 38 seconds to Virenque. Riis had one of his best days of his title-defense Tour, and Pantani lost 34 seconds to him. Olano disappointed most observers on this time trial, but he still delivered a decent performance. Yet he could only beat Pantani by a mere 28 seconds. Jan Ullrich would have been a match for all the Indurains, Merckxes and Armstrongs of cycling history on this day, but even though nobody in the field could reasonably be compared to Ullrich on this time trial, Pantani still managed to lose only 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Compare that to the 10-11 minutes he would lose to Indurain on time trials before, and it's clear that New Pantani had appeared on stage.
Pantani's two stage wins en route to third overall in the '97 Tour were very different. Alpe d'Huez was the coming of age of New Pantani. It was a single-climb stage which produced some tremendous iconic images and some exceptional racing (Ullrich, who finished 47 seconds behind Pantani, produced what is still the fifth-fastest time on the climb of Alpe d'Huez, and the fastest non-time trial time of anybody not named Pantani). And Pantani, as he explained himself after the stage, used a different plan of attack from his former MO on the climbs. Rather than sprinting away from his opponents, he wore them out. He simply dropped them one by one, starting with Casagrande and Riis, then, in very dramatic fashion, Virenque, who would rebound spectacularly on the next day's stage. And finally Ullrich, who settled in for a good performance. But nobody could follow Pantani. There was no element of surprise, no blitz attack or any shenanigans like that - just sheer power. Notice as well how it is a noticeably more muscular, well built Pantani in the 1997 Tour - the romantic grimpeur of 1994 was a thing of the past.
He made two appearances in the following two stages. The following day, Pantani got dropped when Bjarne Riis led Ullrich and Escartin up the Col de la Madeleine, which proved to be the decisive point of that stage. He clawed back some time up the climb to Courchevel, but not quite enough. Then, on the final mountain stage to Morzine, New Pantani took a page out of the playbook of Pantani of old. He only needed to attack once, from the seventh or eighth position in the front group, and away he went. Apparently Pantani wasn't in his best health condition on the stage to Morzine, but the moment he attacks from the Telekom-controlled lead group is a thing of beauty.
This stage was the key moment of the 1998 Giro d'Italia, in itself a seminal moment in Pantani's career. He won another couple stages that year, so why this one? Because after Zülle's complete meltdown a couple days later, Pantani was no longer racing against the lanky Swiss rider, but against Pavel Tonkov. And if one excludes the Selva Gardena stage from the '98 Giro, Tonkov would have actually managed to still beat Pantani, in terms of pure calculation. It is very often forgotten that that apart from this one stage, Pantani's win in the '98 Giro was actually a very tight duel with Tonkov, and this stage proved the difference Pantani would need. Also, this was the manifestation of the New Pantani Doctrine, which would be put to good use a couple months later: No question Pantani could have dropped Giuseppe Guerini at will several times on the run-in to Selva Gardena, but he knew the company of a solid mountain specialist with good tempo qualities would be valuable in the grand scheme of winning overall. Pantani's victory in the 1998 Giro d'Italia was a festival of folklore, and he enjoyed an unparallelled popularity among Italian fans which would carry him into the Tour de France.
Pantani came to the '98 Tour de France as a remote outsider. He had won the media battle, projecting his own ambitions as a stage win or two, but no chance of overall success. However, the Giro win had lit a fire in Pantani, and he was clearly thinking differently himself. Quietly (which is to say, amid Festina headlines and speculation about Ullrich's real form, not many noticed it), Pantani rode an excellent time trial, and in the Pyrenees he would put himself in a contending position. His blistering attack on the Peyresourde on the tenth stage is vintage Pantani: he was clearly on form, and at the moment he attacks you can almost sense Ullrich thinking 'ah crap!'. Ullrich was clearly not on his best form - compare these images to the ones from 1997 for an excellent illustration of this.
Then came the stage to Plateau de Beille, which was a good performance by Pantani, but today it's probably best remembered for Ullrich's comeback to the leaders after a flat tyre at the worst possible time. Nevertheless, Pantani picked up more than 90 seconds overall before the Alps.
On the titanic stage to Les Deux Alpes, two riders met their fates in Tour de France history. Jan Ullrich put on his final yellow jersey on the morning of this stage, and such was the impact of his breakdown that he was never quite the same rider, never quite taking control of the race the same matter-of-factly way he did before. Ullrich did come back with a tremendous ride the next day to Albertville, but his successful attack (which nevertheless didn't shake Pantani much) might have been as much a result of inferior competition as the strength and resolve of a dethroned champion.
For Pantani, this stage represented the pinnacle of his career. He attacked hard on the penultimate climb of the day, the Galibier, in horrendous weather conditions, like his idol Charly Gaul before him, and then rode with a group of medium-strength mountain riders (Rodolfo Massi, Chrisophe Rinero and Fernando Escartin) to the foot of the final climb of the day. It was the stage New Pantani had rehearsed for, and although this was the multiple-climb adventure everyone had hoped to see Pantani go for, he still rode cleverly, conserving some energy at critical points of the stage, and displayed the same low-riding power position on the bike which had characterized him since his 1997 comeback.
At the finish line in Les Deux Alpes, Pantani spread out his arms like a savior of cycling in a year of intense crisis, and he would put on his first-ever yellow jersey on the podium shortly after. All of a sudden, the romantic climber of '94 was all grown up, and he was more than capable of putting on a display of effective defense on the way to Paris.
Ironically, after this mammoth performance it would be all downhill for Pantani the adventurous climber. He was now an established big-league stage racer, a Tour winner, and would be viewed upon as such for the duration of his career. No-one could have foreseen how little competitive racing this would entail.
The Giro d'Italia proved to be the decisive race again. The course was engineered so as to fit Pantani perfectly - one could even go so far as to say conspicuously so - and he took full advantage of it. On the ninth stage, a time trial, Pantani only lost 55 seconds to Jalabert, and was within half a second of keeping the overall lead. That time trial, by the way, was conveniently drawn up as a short (32 km) very hilly course. The other time trial of the race, a 45-kilometer course on the 18th stage, was more of a true time trial, but Pantani managed to only lose 1 minute 30 seconds to the specialist winner, Sergei Gontchar. The transformation into New Pantani had been completed, and Pantani was now one of the most complete stage race riders on the planet.
Of course, the time trials didn't matter that year. Because in every single mountain stage, the suddenly evil empire of the Mercatone Uno squad had shut down all attempts at Pantani's race lead, and Pantani himself had dominated the mountains like never before, and now with a Merckxian precision. He was on his way to a very convincing overall win, and he would certainly be a force to be reckoned with in the Tour de France as well.
It came at a significant price. It got boring to look at. Even when Pantani had punctures or other accidents, it seemed he could race at 80% effort and still humiliate his challengers, which that year counted Roberto Heras, Ivan Gotti, Paolo Savoldelli and Laurent Jalabert (so he wasn't exactly racing against semi-pro adversaries). And that dominance got even more ho-hum as the race went along. Am I the only one who has a feeling Pantani is on a training ride on the stage to Oropa? He was way ahead on overall classification, so there's no practical reason for his lack of victory salute. Pantani was no Indurain when it came to masking his feelings - notice how he's looking around when he's dropping Jalabert, like there is no real acceleration going on. 'Oh, did you not want to race? OK, off I go then'. Even Pantani was bored at times during the 1999 Giro.
That all changed after his elevated hematocrit level after yet another stage win, at Madonna di Campiglio. The next stage was going to be the toughest of the race, but with Pantani's utter dominance surely no-one could upset him at this point. So he lost to his own worst enemy - himself. He got thrown out of the race, maglia rosa and all, and the second coming of the Festina scandal was a harsh reality.
Ivan Gotti won the 1999 Giro without ever having looked like an overall winner. The final mountain stage, crossing the Mortirolo pass that five years earlier gave birth to the Pantani legend, turned out to be a fantastic bike race. But everyone's attention was still elsewhere. It was on Pantani.
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What happened to Pantani after that? He vowed to come back, which he did, as an ace domestique for Stefano Garzelli in the 2000 Giro. Garzelli won the race, not least thanks to some key contributions from Pantani (and some second-rate opposition, it should be said).
Pantani's 2000 Tour de France turned out to be his last, and there are actually a few highlights to mention from that race. He went out a little bit as he came in. Well, his much-publicized (and remembered) duel with Lance Armstrong was unprecedented, but his race strategy the rest of the way was the Pantani of old.
On Ventoux, it was clear to everyone - including Pantani - that Armstrong was the stronger climber. Armstrong, like Pantani, is extremely bad at hiding his true feelings, so everyone could see he was humiliating Pantani by giving away the stage win without even trying to mask it. Pantani was livid, which would reflect in the way he rode the rest of the way through the Alps. By the way, notice Pantani's build compared to the once-buff Armstrong on the slopes of Ventoux. Right? Pantani is the slender bird no more, but rather a high-watt power plant struggling to keep up with Armstrong's flailing bike and body. The transformations of both these riders probably have a lot to do with illegal substances, but obviously that is a whole different discussion.
On to the rest of the Alpine stages. Pantani reacted the way it would have become Jan Ullrich to react upon getting beaten by Armstrong: extremely spiteful. Angry. And it provoked the respectless attacker in Pantani, which would be the only entertaining aspect of a rather dull edition of the Tour. On the run-in to Briancon, Pantani was with a group of mountain specialists when Armstrong brings the bunch together. And Pantani then proceeds to launch the single angriest attack I have seen in cycling. He shoots away from the bunch for no apparent reason (he was no factor on the overall) but to show Armstrong he can do it. And it happens just as Armstrong establishes contact with the Pantani group (at 55:00 of this video). The following day, Pantani went into stubborn mode and rode Armstrong off his wheel on the way to Courchevel. This turned out to be Pantani's last great win. And it was great. He held off all the chasers, caught and passed José-María Jimenez, another one of the great climbers of the late-90s, and took the stage with a tough grimace on his face.
Then came a rest day where Armstrong openly bashed Pantani during a press conference. Armstrong mentioned Pantani's 'attitude', which apparently was Armstrong-speak for trying wholeheartedly to attack him. That would continue, however, on the following stage to Morzine, where Pantani launched his final great attack, and the one I choose to remember him for from the 2000 Tour de France. Everything, including soundbites from Armstrong's press conference, is in this video.
Pantani attacked on the first climb of the day, the Col des Saisies, and stayed away for three climbs, all the way to the foot of the final one of the stage, the legendary Joux-Plane. Then he completely blew up, and rolled all the way to the finish without competing for anything again.
It was an act of brazen confidence, but also of spite. Armstrong had proclaimed that Pantani was there to win stages, whereas he, Armstrong, was there to win overall. Pantani, who was nine minutes down on general classification, then proceeded to attack the only way he could if he was to have a chance to win the Tour: far, far away from the finish line. A true throwback performance which led many observers to compare Pantani's 'attitude', to use Armstrong's word, to Charly Gaul's back in the day.
What followed was one of the most bizarre mountain stages of recent Tour history. Understandably enough, Armstrong's US Postal team never let the furious pirate get too much of a lead, but the day-long pursuit cost them so much that on the Joux-Plane, Armstrong was isolated and outnumbered by his opponents for the first time in his years as a Tour contender. He wound up losing a couple minutes to Jan Ullrich, who, had he been on better form, might have won the Tour right there, ironically on the coattails of Pantani's bravery (see more about this in the post about Jan Ullrich). Pantani was the one who wore out Armstrong, but no challenger chose this approach to breaking down the Texan again, however successful it may have looked. It was simply too risky. And too old-fashioned. Yes - the romantic climber Pantani from his early days had made one last appearance.
The ending of the stage was bizarre too, ironically with Richard Virenque as its winner, and the main protagonist of the day, Pantani himself, rolling across the finish line surrounded by his pink phalanx of Mercatone Uno riders half an hour later. And then Pantani abandoned the race, never to be seen again. His prime merit of the 2000 Tour de France had been not only to win a stage at Courchevel, but also to show cracks in Armstrong's armor on the stage to Morzine. If not for Pantani's stubborn attacks, one would certainly have remembered 2000 as Armstrong's most dominant Tour win. Now, it turned out to be a race where the focus suddenly shifted to the fact that Armstrong needed perhaps the strongest time trial of his career, at Mulhouse, to even win a stage. Pantani made his contribution even without winning, just like he had in 1994.
Two questions remain when considering the legacy of Marco Pantani. Where would he rank among all-time great climbers like Gaul, Bahamontes, Van Impe, etc.? And what would have happened if Marco Pantani had had Lance Armstrong's luck when it comes to getting out of all kinds of PED-related jams?
It's hard to compare the qualities of bike riders across different eras. Was Miguel Indurain a better time triallist than Jacques Anquetil? Who would have won a Tour de France where both Merckx, Hinault, Indurain and Armstrong could participate, all in their primes? And would Greg Lemond in his accident-shortened prime have been a match for either one of them? Comparisons like that are borderline impossible to make. Suffice it to say Pantani's abilities in the mountains are all-time great, and he's definitely in the top tier of climbers in cycling history.
It is also hard to overlook the fact that he could have had more, though. When Pantani learned to channel his inner Charly Gaul, his unique physical gifts had faded, and it was too late. Had Pantani attacked in 1994 like he did on the Morzine stage in 2000, who knows how much he could have set the race on fire. Even in 1997, had he had the courage from Morzine, there were plenty of multiple-climb stages on which to upset Ullrich.
When was Pantani's peak even? Was it in 1998, when he got his most important results, or in 1994, when he appeared to do the best climbs in history, compared to his peers? It goes to the dualistic nature of Pantani's career that his Tour win might not have been his best performance. The field was decimated, several key contenders were not there. What would Virenque have been able to do on the stage to Les Deux Alpes? Dufaux, Zülle, all the other Festina riders? The way I see it, Pantani wasn't as physically gifted a rider in 1997-98 as in 1994.
Of course, Pantani's peak was in 1999, when he was as complete a rider as anyone vying for Tour or Giro overall success. That brings me to the second part of Pantani's legacy. For years, there was a widespread view of Pantani as someone who cheated and, absurdly enough, of Armstrong as someone who did not. Had Pantani not been caught in Madonna Di Campiglio in 1999 (or had he shown a little more caution in his medically-aided development towards being a complete rider), not only Pantani's life might have turned out completely different, but also cycling history. Before the 2000 Tour, Armstrong famously declared the race was going to be 'a heavyweight fight' with him up against Pantani and Ullrich at the same time. But Pantani (and Ullrich as well, but that's another story) had already faded as a contender, but if by then he hadn't, how easy would Armstrong's Tour win had been?
The Armstrong dominance in the Tour was built largely on swagger and bullying, and one might even argue that had Pantani made it to the 1999 Tour in something even close to his '99 Giro form, would Armstrong even have won that first Tour victory that brought him the confidence and swagger? In time, all doping offenders get caught or exposed eventually, that's been the rule, but could the years we have now erased from Tour history have been known as the 'Pantani Era'?
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Up and down, enigmas and legends, such was the career - and I guess the life - of Marco Pantani. Looking back on his cycling career, he was rarely a stable presence for long. Therein lies the fascination of bringing him up again now, and therein certainly lies the pain and sorrow of cycling - - the demise of Marco Pantani closely followed the general demise of world cycling.
Today I'm going to present my analysis of a particular aspect of the EPO era and the aesthetically sad demise of cycling at the turn of the millennium. I'm going to look at the case of Marco Pantani.
The legend of the climber
Start by, if you will, taking a look at the Giro d'Italia stage that created the legend of Pantani. This was the emergence of a climber, a grimpeur, as the French say, in the pure tradition of Bahamontes, Van Impe, Charly Gaul or José Manuel Fuente. The legend of what it was that Pantani pulled off on this stage was at least partly due to the word image painted by Indurain after the stage ('I was seeing stars'). Pantani attacked relentlessly, and forced his competitors into a rythm they were unable to sustain. And he did so on the biggest stage of that year's Giro - the stage when Indurain had launched an attack on the bright young Russian star Berzin, who would go on to win the race. And on the savage Mortirolo climb, no less! Pantani was truly a sensation in the world of cycling.Notice how Pantani is riding at this point of his career. As the Danish poet and cycling analyst Jørgen Leth said in his 1994 analysis of Pantani's career limits: 'He sprints away. It isn't toughness or consistency, but pure acceleration'. There's an arythmic element to Pantani's way of attacking a climb in his 1994 incarnation. Tactically, though, Pantani was still a diamond in the rough. His breakthrough on the biggest stage of the season, the Tour de France, came on stage 11 to Hautacam, where Pantani showed a wonderful lack of patience in attacking as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He was crushed, of course, by a legendary performance from Miguel Indurain, whose constrictor-like attack from the head of the field was too much to handle for everybody (except Luc Leblanc who sat on his wheel and outsprinted the big guy for the stage win). Pantani had several of those moments in the 1994 Tour, where mistimed attacks or strategic errors cost him the elusive stage win. On the Mont Ventoux stage, his Carrera team had underestimated Eros Poli's resolve in getting over the hump with a 30-minute lead (but Pantani soared away from the other leading riders on the way up the Bald Giant). He was caught on the descent, but when the same thing happened at l'Alpe d'Huez and for the third day in a row at Val Thorens, it had become a theme of the 1994 Tour de France. This newcomer was the best climber in the world, and apparently it wasn't even close, but he was unable to time his attacks so as to win stages. Pantani finished third overall in that year's Tour de France, and he had played a major role in the animation of a Tour that could have become historically boring after Rominger's demise at Hautacam. There was even talk of creating an 'anti-Indurain route' one of the upcoming years, since Pantani, according to a quick calculation presented, among others, by Jørgen Leth in his 1994 book, would have been the winner of the '94 Tour (ahead of Ugrumov and Indurain), if not for the flat time trial at Bergerac, where Indurain had laid down the law.
I will state the bold claim that Pantani's performance in the 1994 Tour de France was one of the most influential factors of the cycling world in the mid-90s. So much changed because of Pantani's way of attacking the race. Pantani himself realized he needed to win some stages since he was the strongest rider in the mountains. He accomplished this the following year, though it came at the cost of no longer being a factor on overall classification. Miguel Indurain realized there was a new factor in his preparation for the Tour, and the following year he based his victory on unprecedented dominance on a few selected mountain stages (most notably the La Plagne stage, where he put more than two and a half minutes into Pantani), rather than time trial power. And the Tour organizers realized they had had a race in 1994 where several of the strongest riders had virtually been eliminated from serious contention by the long time trial. 1994 thus became the last year where all climbers were knocked out of contention after the time trial; already the following year, the first time trial was shorter and hillier, and in 1996, the mountain time trial made a comeback, and as the first time trial no less.
In 1996, Pantani wasn't able to partake in the mountaneous hodown of the Tour, but he came back after a series of accidents and setbacks in 1997. He was a changed rider.
During the first couple mountain stages of the 1997 Tour de France, Pantani looked like one of the stronger riders in the climbs, but hardly anything exceptional. He didn't have the extra giddyup that had made him the source of cycling romantics three years earlier, and Jan Ullrich's all-around dominance seemed to blur the resurgence of Pantani.
Then this happened. I know, more than anything this time trial was Ullrich's Indurain-esque execution of his competitors' hopes of toppling him that year, but it's also a very clear sign of the appearance of New Pantani. If you compare his performance in this time trial to Ullrich's competitors (Virenque, Riis, Olano), Virenque rode the time trial of his life, not least thanks to his taking Ullrich's wheel on the last third of the course. Pantani lost 38 seconds to Virenque. Riis had one of his best days of his title-defense Tour, and Pantani lost 34 seconds to him. Olano disappointed most observers on this time trial, but he still delivered a decent performance. Yet he could only beat Pantani by a mere 28 seconds. Jan Ullrich would have been a match for all the Indurains, Merckxes and Armstrongs of cycling history on this day, but even though nobody in the field could reasonably be compared to Ullrich on this time trial, Pantani still managed to lose only 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Compare that to the 10-11 minutes he would lose to Indurain on time trials before, and it's clear that New Pantani had appeared on stage.
Pantani's two stage wins en route to third overall in the '97 Tour were very different. Alpe d'Huez was the coming of age of New Pantani. It was a single-climb stage which produced some tremendous iconic images and some exceptional racing (Ullrich, who finished 47 seconds behind Pantani, produced what is still the fifth-fastest time on the climb of Alpe d'Huez, and the fastest non-time trial time of anybody not named Pantani). And Pantani, as he explained himself after the stage, used a different plan of attack from his former MO on the climbs. Rather than sprinting away from his opponents, he wore them out. He simply dropped them one by one, starting with Casagrande and Riis, then, in very dramatic fashion, Virenque, who would rebound spectacularly on the next day's stage. And finally Ullrich, who settled in for a good performance. But nobody could follow Pantani. There was no element of surprise, no blitz attack or any shenanigans like that - just sheer power. Notice as well how it is a noticeably more muscular, well built Pantani in the 1997 Tour - the romantic grimpeur of 1994 was a thing of the past.
He made two appearances in the following two stages. The following day, Pantani got dropped when Bjarne Riis led Ullrich and Escartin up the Col de la Madeleine, which proved to be the decisive point of that stage. He clawed back some time up the climb to Courchevel, but not quite enough. Then, on the final mountain stage to Morzine, New Pantani took a page out of the playbook of Pantani of old. He only needed to attack once, from the seventh or eighth position in the front group, and away he went. Apparently Pantani wasn't in his best health condition on the stage to Morzine, but the moment he attacks from the Telekom-controlled lead group is a thing of beauty.
The biggest year
1998 proved to be Pantani's mega-apex as a bike rider. In the Giro, which was a particularly tough edition, he was for the first time a serious candidate for the overall win. He started his Giro the way he had his '97 Tour (except for an embarassing attempt by the organizers to steal him an extra minute on Zülle, but that was hardly Pantani's fault). But on the stage to Selva Gardena he set the race on fire. Notice at the beginning of this video how Zülle has the race under control and looks cool and calm. Right before Tonkov puts the pressure on, Pantani had reportedly asked his teammate Roberto Conti when the climb (the fierce Fedaia pass) was supposed to get really steep. 'It's here!' replied Conti, and Pantani one-upped Tonkov's attack and went away with Giuseppe Guerini.This stage was the key moment of the 1998 Giro d'Italia, in itself a seminal moment in Pantani's career. He won another couple stages that year, so why this one? Because after Zülle's complete meltdown a couple days later, Pantani was no longer racing against the lanky Swiss rider, but against Pavel Tonkov. And if one excludes the Selva Gardena stage from the '98 Giro, Tonkov would have actually managed to still beat Pantani, in terms of pure calculation. It is very often forgotten that that apart from this one stage, Pantani's win in the '98 Giro was actually a very tight duel with Tonkov, and this stage proved the difference Pantani would need. Also, this was the manifestation of the New Pantani Doctrine, which would be put to good use a couple months later: No question Pantani could have dropped Giuseppe Guerini at will several times on the run-in to Selva Gardena, but he knew the company of a solid mountain specialist with good tempo qualities would be valuable in the grand scheme of winning overall. Pantani's victory in the 1998 Giro d'Italia was a festival of folklore, and he enjoyed an unparallelled popularity among Italian fans which would carry him into the Tour de France.
Pantani came to the '98 Tour de France as a remote outsider. He had won the media battle, projecting his own ambitions as a stage win or two, but no chance of overall success. However, the Giro win had lit a fire in Pantani, and he was clearly thinking differently himself. Quietly (which is to say, amid Festina headlines and speculation about Ullrich's real form, not many noticed it), Pantani rode an excellent time trial, and in the Pyrenees he would put himself in a contending position. His blistering attack on the Peyresourde on the tenth stage is vintage Pantani: he was clearly on form, and at the moment he attacks you can almost sense Ullrich thinking 'ah crap!'. Ullrich was clearly not on his best form - compare these images to the ones from 1997 for an excellent illustration of this.
Then came the stage to Plateau de Beille, which was a good performance by Pantani, but today it's probably best remembered for Ullrich's comeback to the leaders after a flat tyre at the worst possible time. Nevertheless, Pantani picked up more than 90 seconds overall before the Alps.
On the titanic stage to Les Deux Alpes, two riders met their fates in Tour de France history. Jan Ullrich put on his final yellow jersey on the morning of this stage, and such was the impact of his breakdown that he was never quite the same rider, never quite taking control of the race the same matter-of-factly way he did before. Ullrich did come back with a tremendous ride the next day to Albertville, but his successful attack (which nevertheless didn't shake Pantani much) might have been as much a result of inferior competition as the strength and resolve of a dethroned champion.
For Pantani, this stage represented the pinnacle of his career. He attacked hard on the penultimate climb of the day, the Galibier, in horrendous weather conditions, like his idol Charly Gaul before him, and then rode with a group of medium-strength mountain riders (Rodolfo Massi, Chrisophe Rinero and Fernando Escartin) to the foot of the final climb of the day. It was the stage New Pantani had rehearsed for, and although this was the multiple-climb adventure everyone had hoped to see Pantani go for, he still rode cleverly, conserving some energy at critical points of the stage, and displayed the same low-riding power position on the bike which had characterized him since his 1997 comeback.
At the finish line in Les Deux Alpes, Pantani spread out his arms like a savior of cycling in a year of intense crisis, and he would put on his first-ever yellow jersey on the podium shortly after. All of a sudden, the romantic climber of '94 was all grown up, and he was more than capable of putting on a display of effective defense on the way to Paris.
Ironically, after this mammoth performance it would be all downhill for Pantani the adventurous climber. He was now an established big-league stage racer, a Tour winner, and would be viewed upon as such for the duration of his career. No-one could have foreseen how little competitive racing this would entail.
Evil Empire
Marco Pantani started 1999 as a superstar of cycling, and of Italian sports in general. He took this superstar status very seriously, as his breathtaking attack on the Cipressa hill in Milan-Sanremo shows. The former reference point of the early spring season had become a tad boring in those years - and Pantani livened it up with what appeared to be a serious, if unsuccessful, attempt.The Giro d'Italia proved to be the decisive race again. The course was engineered so as to fit Pantani perfectly - one could even go so far as to say conspicuously so - and he took full advantage of it. On the ninth stage, a time trial, Pantani only lost 55 seconds to Jalabert, and was within half a second of keeping the overall lead. That time trial, by the way, was conveniently drawn up as a short (32 km) very hilly course. The other time trial of the race, a 45-kilometer course on the 18th stage, was more of a true time trial, but Pantani managed to only lose 1 minute 30 seconds to the specialist winner, Sergei Gontchar. The transformation into New Pantani had been completed, and Pantani was now one of the most complete stage race riders on the planet.
Of course, the time trials didn't matter that year. Because in every single mountain stage, the suddenly evil empire of the Mercatone Uno squad had shut down all attempts at Pantani's race lead, and Pantani himself had dominated the mountains like never before, and now with a Merckxian precision. He was on his way to a very convincing overall win, and he would certainly be a force to be reckoned with in the Tour de France as well.
It came at a significant price. It got boring to look at. Even when Pantani had punctures or other accidents, it seemed he could race at 80% effort and still humiliate his challengers, which that year counted Roberto Heras, Ivan Gotti, Paolo Savoldelli and Laurent Jalabert (so he wasn't exactly racing against semi-pro adversaries). And that dominance got even more ho-hum as the race went along. Am I the only one who has a feeling Pantani is on a training ride on the stage to Oropa? He was way ahead on overall classification, so there's no practical reason for his lack of victory salute. Pantani was no Indurain when it came to masking his feelings - notice how he's looking around when he's dropping Jalabert, like there is no real acceleration going on. 'Oh, did you not want to race? OK, off I go then'. Even Pantani was bored at times during the 1999 Giro.
That all changed after his elevated hematocrit level after yet another stage win, at Madonna di Campiglio. The next stage was going to be the toughest of the race, but with Pantani's utter dominance surely no-one could upset him at this point. So he lost to his own worst enemy - himself. He got thrown out of the race, maglia rosa and all, and the second coming of the Festina scandal was a harsh reality.
Ivan Gotti won the 1999 Giro without ever having looked like an overall winner. The final mountain stage, crossing the Mortirolo pass that five years earlier gave birth to the Pantani legend, turned out to be a fantastic bike race. But everyone's attention was still elsewhere. It was on Pantani.
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What happened to Pantani after that? He vowed to come back, which he did, as an ace domestique for Stefano Garzelli in the 2000 Giro. Garzelli won the race, not least thanks to some key contributions from Pantani (and some second-rate opposition, it should be said).
Pantani's 2000 Tour de France turned out to be his last, and there are actually a few highlights to mention from that race. He went out a little bit as he came in. Well, his much-publicized (and remembered) duel with Lance Armstrong was unprecedented, but his race strategy the rest of the way was the Pantani of old.
On Ventoux, it was clear to everyone - including Pantani - that Armstrong was the stronger climber. Armstrong, like Pantani, is extremely bad at hiding his true feelings, so everyone could see he was humiliating Pantani by giving away the stage win without even trying to mask it. Pantani was livid, which would reflect in the way he rode the rest of the way through the Alps. By the way, notice Pantani's build compared to the once-buff Armstrong on the slopes of Ventoux. Right? Pantani is the slender bird no more, but rather a high-watt power plant struggling to keep up with Armstrong's flailing bike and body. The transformations of both these riders probably have a lot to do with illegal substances, but obviously that is a whole different discussion.
On to the rest of the Alpine stages. Pantani reacted the way it would have become Jan Ullrich to react upon getting beaten by Armstrong: extremely spiteful. Angry. And it provoked the respectless attacker in Pantani, which would be the only entertaining aspect of a rather dull edition of the Tour. On the run-in to Briancon, Pantani was with a group of mountain specialists when Armstrong brings the bunch together. And Pantani then proceeds to launch the single angriest attack I have seen in cycling. He shoots away from the bunch for no apparent reason (he was no factor on the overall) but to show Armstrong he can do it. And it happens just as Armstrong establishes contact with the Pantani group (at 55:00 of this video). The following day, Pantani went into stubborn mode and rode Armstrong off his wheel on the way to Courchevel. This turned out to be Pantani's last great win. And it was great. He held off all the chasers, caught and passed José-María Jimenez, another one of the great climbers of the late-90s, and took the stage with a tough grimace on his face.
Then came a rest day where Armstrong openly bashed Pantani during a press conference. Armstrong mentioned Pantani's 'attitude', which apparently was Armstrong-speak for trying wholeheartedly to attack him. That would continue, however, on the following stage to Morzine, where Pantani launched his final great attack, and the one I choose to remember him for from the 2000 Tour de France. Everything, including soundbites from Armstrong's press conference, is in this video.
Pantani attacked on the first climb of the day, the Col des Saisies, and stayed away for three climbs, all the way to the foot of the final one of the stage, the legendary Joux-Plane. Then he completely blew up, and rolled all the way to the finish without competing for anything again.
It was an act of brazen confidence, but also of spite. Armstrong had proclaimed that Pantani was there to win stages, whereas he, Armstrong, was there to win overall. Pantani, who was nine minutes down on general classification, then proceeded to attack the only way he could if he was to have a chance to win the Tour: far, far away from the finish line. A true throwback performance which led many observers to compare Pantani's 'attitude', to use Armstrong's word, to Charly Gaul's back in the day.
What followed was one of the most bizarre mountain stages of recent Tour history. Understandably enough, Armstrong's US Postal team never let the furious pirate get too much of a lead, but the day-long pursuit cost them so much that on the Joux-Plane, Armstrong was isolated and outnumbered by his opponents for the first time in his years as a Tour contender. He wound up losing a couple minutes to Jan Ullrich, who, had he been on better form, might have won the Tour right there, ironically on the coattails of Pantani's bravery (see more about this in the post about Jan Ullrich). Pantani was the one who wore out Armstrong, but no challenger chose this approach to breaking down the Texan again, however successful it may have looked. It was simply too risky. And too old-fashioned. Yes - the romantic climber Pantani from his early days had made one last appearance.
The ending of the stage was bizarre too, ironically with Richard Virenque as its winner, and the main protagonist of the day, Pantani himself, rolling across the finish line surrounded by his pink phalanx of Mercatone Uno riders half an hour later. And then Pantani abandoned the race, never to be seen again. His prime merit of the 2000 Tour de France had been not only to win a stage at Courchevel, but also to show cracks in Armstrong's armor on the stage to Morzine. If not for Pantani's stubborn attacks, one would certainly have remembered 2000 as Armstrong's most dominant Tour win. Now, it turned out to be a race where the focus suddenly shifted to the fact that Armstrong needed perhaps the strongest time trial of his career, at Mulhouse, to even win a stage. Pantani made his contribution even without winning, just like he had in 1994.
Pantani's legacy
The remaining races of Pantani's career are a rather sad chapter. He was busted for PEDs again in 2001 during the Giro, and didn't return until the 2003 Giro where he made a few half-hearted attempts (or so they looked; it might have been more of a question of fading abilities). On February 14th, 2004, he was found dead at a hotel in Rimini. His death alone inspired scores of hommages of different types, most notably monuments in Cesenatico and at the Mortirolo pass, and a fan fiction novel insinuating he might have been murdered. The reality, however, is probably just the cocaine overdose the autopsy showed. A sad ending for one of cycling's greatest figures of the 1990s.Two questions remain when considering the legacy of Marco Pantani. Where would he rank among all-time great climbers like Gaul, Bahamontes, Van Impe, etc.? And what would have happened if Marco Pantani had had Lance Armstrong's luck when it comes to getting out of all kinds of PED-related jams?
It's hard to compare the qualities of bike riders across different eras. Was Miguel Indurain a better time triallist than Jacques Anquetil? Who would have won a Tour de France where both Merckx, Hinault, Indurain and Armstrong could participate, all in their primes? And would Greg Lemond in his accident-shortened prime have been a match for either one of them? Comparisons like that are borderline impossible to make. Suffice it to say Pantani's abilities in the mountains are all-time great, and he's definitely in the top tier of climbers in cycling history.
It is also hard to overlook the fact that he could have had more, though. When Pantani learned to channel his inner Charly Gaul, his unique physical gifts had faded, and it was too late. Had Pantani attacked in 1994 like he did on the Morzine stage in 2000, who knows how much he could have set the race on fire. Even in 1997, had he had the courage from Morzine, there were plenty of multiple-climb stages on which to upset Ullrich.
When was Pantani's peak even? Was it in 1998, when he got his most important results, or in 1994, when he appeared to do the best climbs in history, compared to his peers? It goes to the dualistic nature of Pantani's career that his Tour win might not have been his best performance. The field was decimated, several key contenders were not there. What would Virenque have been able to do on the stage to Les Deux Alpes? Dufaux, Zülle, all the other Festina riders? The way I see it, Pantani wasn't as physically gifted a rider in 1997-98 as in 1994.
Of course, Pantani's peak was in 1999, when he was as complete a rider as anyone vying for Tour or Giro overall success. That brings me to the second part of Pantani's legacy. For years, there was a widespread view of Pantani as someone who cheated and, absurdly enough, of Armstrong as someone who did not. Had Pantani not been caught in Madonna Di Campiglio in 1999 (or had he shown a little more caution in his medically-aided development towards being a complete rider), not only Pantani's life might have turned out completely different, but also cycling history. Before the 2000 Tour, Armstrong famously declared the race was going to be 'a heavyweight fight' with him up against Pantani and Ullrich at the same time. But Pantani (and Ullrich as well, but that's another story) had already faded as a contender, but if by then he hadn't, how easy would Armstrong's Tour win had been?
The Armstrong dominance in the Tour was built largely on swagger and bullying, and one might even argue that had Pantani made it to the 1999 Tour in something even close to his '99 Giro form, would Armstrong even have won that first Tour victory that brought him the confidence and swagger? In time, all doping offenders get caught or exposed eventually, that's been the rule, but could the years we have now erased from Tour history have been known as the 'Pantani Era'?
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Up and down, enigmas and legends, such was the career - and I guess the life - of Marco Pantani. Looking back on his cycling career, he was rarely a stable presence for long. Therein lies the fascination of bringing him up again now, and therein certainly lies the pain and sorrow of cycling - - the demise of Marco Pantani closely followed the general demise of world cycling.
søndag den 20. januar 2013
Why the Oprah interview doesn't change a thing
Watching Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah, you get the feeling that this was supposed to be presented as news to some people. As if it were a surprise in any way at all the Armstrong had taken PEDs, that all the things that Tyler Hamilton and other former teammates had said about him was true.
To me, the fact that Armstrong now came out and admitted to PED use doesn't change a thing about the way I feel about him. Back in the years 2002-2004, I was highly critical of Armstrong. I don't know how many of my articles are still left at www.cyclingworld.dk, and they're in Danish anyway, but I had a pretty consistent record of Armstrong-criticism back then.
But I was never critical of Armstorng because I had the impression his advanced PED knowledge was what made the difference. If anything, cycling talent came close a couple times to actually overpowering him (Ullrich might not have been clean either, but you always had the feeling if Mother Nature had decided those Tours, that Ullrich would have won by a huge margin). I did, of course, agree with Greg LeMond when he wrote that 'Armstrong was never this good - he was supposed to be a mediocre cyclist', and then the PEDs took him to the next level. God only knows how many others that was true of back in the EPO era of cycling (my compatriot Bjarne Riis certainly comes to mind).
No, what I was critical of was Armstrong's personality. As those who really know cycling, and I'm happy to mention Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth again hee, will know, personality goes a long way in that sport. Because you spend hours and hours in their company, you feel like you get an impression of the riders' personalities.
Sometimes you are wrong, of course, as most Danish people probably are with people like Tony Rominger and Claudio Chiappucci after the Danish TV's coverage of the '92-'93 Tours. But most of the times, you can spot riders' personality features pretty easily over the course of 21 times 7 hours of racing action in a Tour de France.
Lance Armstrong's personality was something cycling had never seen before. He was not well liked among his peers as a brazen young one-day rider, but of course that cancer made most people forget about those days. When he came back, though, Lance Armstrong turned out to be the least likeable Tour de France winner in history - especially when you add his paranoid, manic and aggressive personality to the kind of domination he could exercise over the peloton.
He was greedy (only let a hopelessly beaten overall competitor win a stage if it doubled as a psychological submission of said competitor; see Basso, Ivan 2004). He threatened witnesses with in-race badgering (see Simeoni, Filippo; also 2004). He deliberately misinterpreted race action in order to make his competitors look bad in the media (see the Luz Ardiden incident, 2003). He changed cycling from a gentleman's sport that took place on the regular roads for all people to follow closehand to a sport for ego-driven maniacs who use any means necessary to win. The Alberto Contador years were a clear sign of this permanent change in the sport. Personality-wise, Lance Armstrong was all that his great predecessor, Miguel Indurain, wasn't. And because he won so much, everyone in cycling had to both follow his methods and pretend they liked him rather than fear his actions on and off the bike.
He changed cycling not only to the worse, but to something that's not worth watching anymore. That's why I was, and remain, highly critical of Armstrong.
Does it matter that he got stripped of his seven Tour titles? No. The images of his obsessive stare when riding up the Luz Ardiden in 2003 can't be erased. The fact that over seven long years, and the ones that followed, cycling deteriorated as a spectator sport, that can't be erased either. I have read many well-written pieces by American sports journalists regretting how Lance Armstrong was able to trick them. Make them defend him. Lie to them while looking them dead in the eye.
That's progress. People who were blinded by Armstrong's tremendous results back then now realize what kind of person he was all along. I have known that since the mid 90's. It's just a pleasure to watch now how Armstrong must go through what he made others (Hamilton, Landis, LeMond, etc.) go through. Have a nice life, Lance!
Now, that's why the Oprah interview doesn't change how I feel about the guy. I never liked him. I still don't. Much of the stuff he said to Oprah could, if it had been anyone else, be interpreted as remorse. As insight, as if he had seen himself how big a 'jerk' he was, to use his own expression.
But that is only if you believe him. I never did. And at this point, who does?
To me, the fact that Armstrong now came out and admitted to PED use doesn't change a thing about the way I feel about him. Back in the years 2002-2004, I was highly critical of Armstrong. I don't know how many of my articles are still left at www.cyclingworld.dk, and they're in Danish anyway, but I had a pretty consistent record of Armstrong-criticism back then.
But I was never critical of Armstorng because I had the impression his advanced PED knowledge was what made the difference. If anything, cycling talent came close a couple times to actually overpowering him (Ullrich might not have been clean either, but you always had the feeling if Mother Nature had decided those Tours, that Ullrich would have won by a huge margin). I did, of course, agree with Greg LeMond when he wrote that 'Armstrong was never this good - he was supposed to be a mediocre cyclist', and then the PEDs took him to the next level. God only knows how many others that was true of back in the EPO era of cycling (my compatriot Bjarne Riis certainly comes to mind).
No, what I was critical of was Armstrong's personality. As those who really know cycling, and I'm happy to mention Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth again hee, will know, personality goes a long way in that sport. Because you spend hours and hours in their company, you feel like you get an impression of the riders' personalities.
Sometimes you are wrong, of course, as most Danish people probably are with people like Tony Rominger and Claudio Chiappucci after the Danish TV's coverage of the '92-'93 Tours. But most of the times, you can spot riders' personality features pretty easily over the course of 21 times 7 hours of racing action in a Tour de France.
Lance Armstrong's personality was something cycling had never seen before. He was not well liked among his peers as a brazen young one-day rider, but of course that cancer made most people forget about those days. When he came back, though, Lance Armstrong turned out to be the least likeable Tour de France winner in history - especially when you add his paranoid, manic and aggressive personality to the kind of domination he could exercise over the peloton.
He was greedy (only let a hopelessly beaten overall competitor win a stage if it doubled as a psychological submission of said competitor; see Basso, Ivan 2004). He threatened witnesses with in-race badgering (see Simeoni, Filippo; also 2004). He deliberately misinterpreted race action in order to make his competitors look bad in the media (see the Luz Ardiden incident, 2003). He changed cycling from a gentleman's sport that took place on the regular roads for all people to follow closehand to a sport for ego-driven maniacs who use any means necessary to win. The Alberto Contador years were a clear sign of this permanent change in the sport. Personality-wise, Lance Armstrong was all that his great predecessor, Miguel Indurain, wasn't. And because he won so much, everyone in cycling had to both follow his methods and pretend they liked him rather than fear his actions on and off the bike.
He changed cycling not only to the worse, but to something that's not worth watching anymore. That's why I was, and remain, highly critical of Armstrong.
Does it matter that he got stripped of his seven Tour titles? No. The images of his obsessive stare when riding up the Luz Ardiden in 2003 can't be erased. The fact that over seven long years, and the ones that followed, cycling deteriorated as a spectator sport, that can't be erased either. I have read many well-written pieces by American sports journalists regretting how Lance Armstrong was able to trick them. Make them defend him. Lie to them while looking them dead in the eye.
That's progress. People who were blinded by Armstrong's tremendous results back then now realize what kind of person he was all along. I have known that since the mid 90's. It's just a pleasure to watch now how Armstrong must go through what he made others (Hamilton, Landis, LeMond, etc.) go through. Have a nice life, Lance!
Now, that's why the Oprah interview doesn't change how I feel about the guy. I never liked him. I still don't. Much of the stuff he said to Oprah could, if it had been anyone else, be interpreted as remorse. As insight, as if he had seen himself how big a 'jerk' he was, to use his own expression.
But that is only if you believe him. I never did. And at this point, who does?
søndag den 16. december 2012
Salad Days. The Battle Royale of the 1996 Tour de France
When you see the starting field of the 1996 Tour today, it is striking how good it was. I was never the biggest fan of Bjarne Riis, even though I am Danish, and I believe his relative collapse in the final time trial of '96 somewhat tainted his win (I'm not even going to go there on the PED issues!). He should have never allowed for discussions about whether or not Jan Ullrich could have beaten him in '96. Riis was the strongest man in this race which included some strange waiting days early on with horrible weather, strategic traps against race favorites, one very historic stage (at Les Arcs, where Indurain cracked), one greatly entertaining mountain sprint (at Sestrieres), and several dramatic events, with the overall result not being totally nailed down before the final time trial.
The thing that was remarkable about the 1996 Tour was actually the number of legendary riders starting in it. I have talked about the volatile nature of sprint earlier in this blog, so I'm not talking about them - but rather the stage race stars participating in this race. Of all riders who won Grand Tours from 1991 through 2001, only three (2000 Giro winner Stefano Garzelli and 1991 Giro winner Franco Chioccoli, as well as '98 Tour and Giro victor Pantani) did not start the '96 Tour. I will admit that this is at least in part due to multiple winners of both the Tour and the Vuelta - and the fact that Lance Armstrong back then did not play a lead role in the Tour - but the peloton of the '96 Tour was impressive. If the injured Pantani had indeed been in this peloton, only three podium-finishers from all Tours from '91 through 2001 were not at the start in s'Hertoogenbosch, Holland (the at this point semi-retired Gianni Bugno, Zenon Jaskula, who was riding for the lower ranked AKI team in '96, and Joseba Beloki, who had yet to turn pro).
Case and point - one of the interesting things to watch again from this Tour was actually the prologue. Notice how 8 of the top 9 riders of this prologue won at least one Grand Tour during their careers. And the ninth rider (second-placed Chris Boardman) was a prologue specialist, who set multiple Hour Records and was a time-trial World Champion! That's not even counting 12th-placed Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich, who rolled his way into 37th, clearly not yet knowning what kind of rider he was. To be fair, no one probably knew at the time what kind of riders Ullrich and Armstrong would become.
The 1996 Tour was actually a bizarre experience. For the first week, everyone thought this was another case of Miguel Indurain having it all under control. It certainly looked like it, and after his incredible display of power in 1995, who would imagine that Indurain could be beat? And who would imagine that the awesome ONCE squad had any real weaknesses when the Tour would begin?
So the first week was waiting. As I remember it, it would be rather frustrating from time to time, not least when the peloton decided to pull an impromptu strike at 28 km/h in rainy and windy conditions. And the strong field would fade over the course of the race, to the point where Bjarne Riis, asked after his strong win at Hautacam who would be his hardest competition, answered 'I don't know. Maybe Olano'. He was wrong, of course, as Jan Ullrich almost made it exciting with an Indurain-esque performance in the Saint-Emilion time trial.
But that fall-off of the competitors was not really Riis' fault - of course you can even say it was to his credit. Indurain suffered a very sudden fall from Les Arcs on, and he had few strong moments in the entire race, but he also suffered from Riis' very intelligent race management through his Telekom troops. Rominger was getting on, actually doing his last good season as a rider, and his less than stellar riding might have held back Olano in some phases of the race. But Olano was never that good anyway, although this particular Tour might have been the strongest we ever saw him. No matter how this Tour wound up unfolding in the mountains, there is no denying the strong field of pretenders to the crown, also including mountain specialists Virenque, Leblanc, Dufaux and one-year wonder Luttenberger. It was just a more interesting bunch to watch than today's protagonists, Wiggins, Schleck and Contador.
On the whole, the Tour of 1996 was an exciting experience, where the weather unfortunately wound up adding at least one dimension to the drama. But the fact remains that after the Alps, even though Bjarne Riis looked very strong, no one knew for sure yet who would be the boss of the race (I'm sure Rominger still thought he could be), nor who would challenge Riis (after the Alps, Berzin was still in the picture, though he would fade badly in the Pyrenees). And to me, this particular edition of the race, though neither the most historic one in terms of its winner nor the performances it saw, remains the Battle Royale that defined cycling's apex in the mid-90's.
Tour de France Nostalgia Revisited: A series.
As far as I am concerned, the sport of cycling peaked in the 1990's. That might have as much to do with the way I saw cycling back then, the sheer ambiance of the events, the doping scandals, or any other non-sports-related factors. In any event, my nostalgic views on the sport of cycling was the most important reason why I stopped writing for cycling magazines on a freelance basis back in 2004 - if the sport is a purely nostalgic venture for you, you're bound to become a cranky old bastard. And you should avoid that.
In the blogosphere, however, anything goes. So today I will write a few words about the revisiting of a couple key moment from cycling's heyday in the 90's. Revisiting 90's cycling so thoroughly is possible thanks to Chick Smith's YouTube channel; I believe he is already a well-known and liked character among cycling nostalgics for uploading that much classic cycling. I certainly appreciate it, and have made good use of it.
It would be impossible to give an overview of the impressions from back then that you relive when watching all these highlights, but let me just give you a few of my thoughts about some key events of the 90's Tour de France experience, revisited now, nearly twenty years on. I will write some blog posts under this header; do let me know if there is any single event you would like me to focus on.
In the blogosphere, however, anything goes. So today I will write a few words about the revisiting of a couple key moment from cycling's heyday in the 90's. Revisiting 90's cycling so thoroughly is possible thanks to Chick Smith's YouTube channel; I believe he is already a well-known and liked character among cycling nostalgics for uploading that much classic cycling. I certainly appreciate it, and have made good use of it.
It would be impossible to give an overview of the impressions from back then that you relive when watching all these highlights, but let me just give you a few of my thoughts about some key events of the 90's Tour de France experience, revisited now, nearly twenty years on. I will write some blog posts under this header; do let me know if there is any single event you would like me to focus on.
søndag den 28. oktober 2012
West Coast bullpen strategy
Any World Series the Yankees are not a part of I am always very quick to pronounce the Who Gives a Rat's Ass World Series. It's not very nice, and it clearly reflects my Yankee-centric - or at least AL-East'o'centric - baseball view. What gnaws at me every time the Yankees fail to make the World Series is that they are consistently in the top two, maybe three, in baseball at winning in the regular season. So every time the Detroit Tigers, winning 85-88 times in a 162-game calendar, makes it further than the Yankees, I take it as an illustration of the unfairness of the postseason format. Which it often is.
Now, I can only imagine what San Francisco fans must have felt like during the 90s. Or every year from 2003 through 2009. But I digress.
Last year the weakest participant in the Who Gives a Rat's Ass World Series wound up winning it. Because it was a team of winners, and their opponent, the Texas Rangers, turned out to be a team of losers.
This year, though, the team that won the most games during the regular season now has a 3-0 lead against the weaker team. In other words, a full house is beating three kings. And the San Francisco Giants are selling that full house as a straight flush now with their strong defense, hustle and general basic luck. But there is one other strong factor in the Giants' postseason run, and that factor is Tim Lincecum.
Lincecum was at the core of the Giants' championship of 2010 as a starter, and that is the role he has made his money in. There is historically way more prestige in starting compared to relieving, and for the few pitchers who have not been successful as starters and who have gone on to have great careers relieving, they have practically all been closers (Mariano Rivera on one level, Jonathan Papelbon on another). What is unique about the way Giants manager Bruce Bochy is using Lincecum this year is that he doesn't look at save opportunities at all - all he cares about is nailing down the game, or shutting down the opponents so as to give the Giants a chance to win.
Tim Lincecum is one of the best starting pitchers in the National League these past five years, and the Giants could not have won without him throwing big quality starts in 2010. But he has had a terrible year, so it seemed like the Giants would perish in the postseason, Lincecum seemingly buried in irrelevance (like A-Rod with the Yankees, I might add). But Bochy has found the perfect use for him in the middle of the games. Last night he threw 2 1/3 innings of shutout ball to get a two-run lead to the closer, who remains Sergio Romo (in Brian Wilson's absence; notice the Giants' bona fide closer is not even a factor in this postseason run!). I bet the Tigers felt like that game was shortened pretty effectively. I bet the Tigers were hoping they wouldn't see Lincecum until the ninth inning.
Similar recipes have been tried before. This was the way managers used relief aces back in the golden era of baseball. Back then there was no save statistic, closers didn't exist. The ace bullpen guy was the Fireman, and his job was to put out fires whenever there was smoke. Often, as it's the case now, this is not in the ninth inning.
It is clearly a factor in making Lincecum an effective reliever that he can go multiple innings without any problems, and that has been an important part of any relief legend's resume. Back in the days of Sutter and Gossage, the closer often worked more than two innings, like the old school firemen. And I will contend that Mariano Rivera, legendary cutter or not, would not have been nearly the factor he was in the Yankees' dominance if he hadn't been the closer who was able to get six outs to nail down a victory. Other relievers have tried that, and not been nearly as successful.
It is a joy to watch Lincecum work the middle relief, and it so clearly takes a lot of strain off the Giants' already pretty good rotation. That's why I'm wondering if it would not be worth the risk to try out this strategy for other teams as well. Have a very good pitcher, capable of starting, moved to middle relief, effectively shortening games and helping the rotation out. It has often been said that a good number three starter is worth more than a great closer - but how would an effective lock-down middle reliever stack up against the number three or four starter he would otherwise be?
See, I'm not saying the Yankees should yank Sabathia from the rotation and put him in the bullpen. The 200+ innings to the tune of a 3.00 ERA he can put up every year is simply worth more. But would it be worth it, for instance, for the Yankees to take a look at Ivan Nova out of the bullpen? Back in 1996, Joe Torre spoke of 'The Formula' as the scenario when the starter could go six innings, the lock-down middle reliever (Mariano Rivera) could go the seventh and eighth, setting up the closer (John Wetteland). Rivera would have been a number-four starter as well had he continued starting, so this setup could become a closer academy, too! Only instead of grooming short-relief pitchers like David Robertson and Joba Chamberlain into taking over the closing, the Yankees could actually find themselves developing a true fireman who could come in to nail down the final six or seven outs of a ball game. Now, that would be a revolution of the closer role - going back to basics, really.
Back in the 80s, the San Francisco 49ers revolutionized football with their West Coast Offense. This year, it appears baseball could learn a thing or two from Bruce Bochy and his West Coast bullpen strategy.
Now, I can only imagine what San Francisco fans must have felt like during the 90s. Or every year from 2003 through 2009. But I digress.
Last year the weakest participant in the Who Gives a Rat's Ass World Series wound up winning it. Because it was a team of winners, and their opponent, the Texas Rangers, turned out to be a team of losers.
This year, though, the team that won the most games during the regular season now has a 3-0 lead against the weaker team. In other words, a full house is beating three kings. And the San Francisco Giants are selling that full house as a straight flush now with their strong defense, hustle and general basic luck. But there is one other strong factor in the Giants' postseason run, and that factor is Tim Lincecum.
Lincecum was at the core of the Giants' championship of 2010 as a starter, and that is the role he has made his money in. There is historically way more prestige in starting compared to relieving, and for the few pitchers who have not been successful as starters and who have gone on to have great careers relieving, they have practically all been closers (Mariano Rivera on one level, Jonathan Papelbon on another). What is unique about the way Giants manager Bruce Bochy is using Lincecum this year is that he doesn't look at save opportunities at all - all he cares about is nailing down the game, or shutting down the opponents so as to give the Giants a chance to win.
Tim Lincecum is one of the best starting pitchers in the National League these past five years, and the Giants could not have won without him throwing big quality starts in 2010. But he has had a terrible year, so it seemed like the Giants would perish in the postseason, Lincecum seemingly buried in irrelevance (like A-Rod with the Yankees, I might add). But Bochy has found the perfect use for him in the middle of the games. Last night he threw 2 1/3 innings of shutout ball to get a two-run lead to the closer, who remains Sergio Romo (in Brian Wilson's absence; notice the Giants' bona fide closer is not even a factor in this postseason run!). I bet the Tigers felt like that game was shortened pretty effectively. I bet the Tigers were hoping they wouldn't see Lincecum until the ninth inning.
Similar recipes have been tried before. This was the way managers used relief aces back in the golden era of baseball. Back then there was no save statistic, closers didn't exist. The ace bullpen guy was the Fireman, and his job was to put out fires whenever there was smoke. Often, as it's the case now, this is not in the ninth inning.
It is clearly a factor in making Lincecum an effective reliever that he can go multiple innings without any problems, and that has been an important part of any relief legend's resume. Back in the days of Sutter and Gossage, the closer often worked more than two innings, like the old school firemen. And I will contend that Mariano Rivera, legendary cutter or not, would not have been nearly the factor he was in the Yankees' dominance if he hadn't been the closer who was able to get six outs to nail down a victory. Other relievers have tried that, and not been nearly as successful.
It is a joy to watch Lincecum work the middle relief, and it so clearly takes a lot of strain off the Giants' already pretty good rotation. That's why I'm wondering if it would not be worth the risk to try out this strategy for other teams as well. Have a very good pitcher, capable of starting, moved to middle relief, effectively shortening games and helping the rotation out. It has often been said that a good number three starter is worth more than a great closer - but how would an effective lock-down middle reliever stack up against the number three or four starter he would otherwise be?
See, I'm not saying the Yankees should yank Sabathia from the rotation and put him in the bullpen. The 200+ innings to the tune of a 3.00 ERA he can put up every year is simply worth more. But would it be worth it, for instance, for the Yankees to take a look at Ivan Nova out of the bullpen? Back in 1996, Joe Torre spoke of 'The Formula' as the scenario when the starter could go six innings, the lock-down middle reliever (Mariano Rivera) could go the seventh and eighth, setting up the closer (John Wetteland). Rivera would have been a number-four starter as well had he continued starting, so this setup could become a closer academy, too! Only instead of grooming short-relief pitchers like David Robertson and Joba Chamberlain into taking over the closing, the Yankees could actually find themselves developing a true fireman who could come in to nail down the final six or seven outs of a ball game. Now, that would be a revolution of the closer role - going back to basics, really.
Back in the 80s, the San Francisco 49ers revolutionized football with their West Coast Offense. This year, it appears baseball could learn a thing or two from Bruce Bochy and his West Coast bullpen strategy.
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