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 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.

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.

-

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'?

-

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.

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.

Is Mark Cavendish the best sprinter ever?

It is generally the norm to begin analyzing the historical place of a given athlete at the moment of his first major defeat. Cruyff became a legend after his '74 loss against Beckenbauer. Mike Tyson's legend grew after his Buster Douglas defeat in '90. And it wasn't until Mariano Rivera blew Game Seven of the 2001 World Series that people began seeing him as the greatest closer of all time. Who would have known at the time that he'd go on to dominate for another decade?

But I digress. I'll go back to my roots and write a little about cycling. The not-until-you-lose kind of love has been shown in cycling, namely to Greg LeMond, who was suddenly much more revered when he'd been doing his Dance Macabre in '92. And dare I say most cycling fans missed Miguel Indurain badly during the Armstrong years, and - not least - what followed?

What's all this got to do with Mark Cavendish? For one, we just saw the first Tour de France in five years that the British sprinter didn't thoroughly dominate. And the guy's still only just turned 27! That isn't to say he hasn't shown anything; he did win three stages, but his team, the all-dominant Team Sky, clearly had bigger fish to fry in the race.
Cavendish was either isolated and up against a focused and fine-tuned machine leading out Andre Greipel. Or, and this is perhaps the more crucial factor, crashes.
Maybe another factor has been other riders' strength. Greipel looks like he's having a breakthrough Tour. Sagan looks like a guy capable of so many things. But mostly, and I believe Cavendish would agree, it's been the crashes.

But in the wake of an Olympic Road Race which was clearly the story of Cavendish (how he could win, how to beat him, how to adjust the strategy according to him), where the Manx Missile actually did lose, let's look a little further into his place in the road cycling sprinters' Pantheon. Where does he rank on a historical scale? And why is it important?
I'll take the first question really quick to begin with. Because that's one of the things I love to discuss - sports history - and among the categories or types of cyclists, I don't believe anybody in the current field would rank among the best climbers ever (the last one to do that was probably Pantani, or maybe Armstrong), nor the best time triallist (though I might do a similar piece about Cancellara compared to other TT specialists). And forget about stage race riders - there's barely enough talent in the current field to man the top two spots on the Tour podium. But Cavendish has been so dominant over the past five years that you have to consider where he ranks all-time against former sprint kings.

So, the second question: Where does Cavendish rank? Numerically, he's right there at the top. He's already the fourth-winningest Tour de France rider in terms of stage wins (23), and he's taken a combined 13 stages in the Giro and the Vuelta. Heck, he's only five stages away from tying Bernard Hinault as the second-winningest stage winner in Tour history (and it is 'only' five when speaking of Cavendish!), and Eddy Merckx's total of 34 might even be within reach. No sprinter has ever been this effective at the top level.

Now, let's look at the nature of his type of rider. The Super Sprinter Era in professional cycling didn't start until the late eighties, early nineties, when riders like Jean-Paul van Poppel, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov and especially Mario Cipollini (plus, to a lesser extent, Olaf Ludwig, the young Dimitri Konyshev and the young Johan Museeuw) started - in blunt terms - not giving a damn about other types of stages than the blanket finishes, blatantly sacrificing versatility for pure speed. So the type of rider that Cavendish is is fairly recent in the history of cycling. Back in the Goodefroot and Maertens days, a sprinter was merely a very fast finisher, who could generally do other things (like winning Paris-Roubaix and the Vuelta, respectively).

With all the numbers of stage wins, who could possibly be a better sprinter in the history of cycling? It clearly requires a sustained dominance over a considerable amount of time - so sprinters who in the notoriously volatile game of bunch sprinting have had few dominant seasons cannot get much consideration here. Tom Steels was arguably the fastest man in terms of pure speed in the 1998-2000 seasons, but a bout with the mono ended his peak years very suddenly. Nicola Minali was said to be unbeatable when in the right position in 1996-1997, but he was demanding when it came to the position and an extremely streaky rider. So was Jeroen Blijlevens, whose form came and went very unpredictably, and many sprinters have been able to come out of the shadows and beat the frontrunners once or twice in the big races. I count Jan Svorada as maybe the best of these 'vulture' sprinter of the 90's, Andre Greipel the best in the current field, and Robbie McEwen probably the best of all time. Robbie Mac rarely dominated, but he does have as many stage wins in the Tour as Mario Cipollini.

And of course, there's the second division of sprinters. The ones that are either very strong finishers, but more versatile riders (Hushovd, Boasson Hagen, Sagan, Guidi - there are a lot of those), or who can dominate a race against weaker competition (step right up, Marcel Wust). Maybe the most interesting ones are the explosive sprinters who can deliver one or two perfect sprints, and that might be it for their careers. But I can still remember Wilfried Nelissen in 1993, Ivan Quaranta making both a very on-form Blijlevens and a Cipollini in his prime look silly in the 1999 Giro, and this year, a young Andrea Guardini out-jumped Cavendish fair and square and simply beat him.
To be fair, Guardini is 23 years old. No one knows yet what he'll become. But that's another story.

Finally, there are the bullies - the ones who ride the sprints like there's no tomorrow. And sometimes there isn't. This category includes the young McEwen, Abdoujaparov, Frederic Moncassin, Andris Naudusz, and, in the current field, Roberto Ferrari. They sometimes win because they have the speed to back up their wild behavior on that last half-kilometer. But true greatness isn't achieved by riding like this.

To me, only three sprinters can possibly stack up against Cavendish. Let's have a look at them:

Alessandro Petacchi
Ale-Jet, as he was called, probably had the most dominating run of anybody in the history of bunch sprinting when he tore apart all competition in the 2003-2005 seasons. Over that three-year span, Petacchi won four stages at the Tour (all in 2003), 14 stages at the Vuelta, and a staggering 19 Giro stages! Think about that for a second - over three seasons, Petacchi almost won an entire Giro worth of stages. And in 2005, he added Milan-San Remo for good measure, not to be outdone by Cipollini's 2002 masterpiece of a season. And all that doesn't include what he won tearing apart Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adreatico and similar smaller races. Petacchi was a rare combination of someone who burst onto the scene (his 11 wins in a debut season is a record that only Cavendish has equalled) and somewhat of a late bloomer in the big races (he was 29 when his dominant run started). He has won the points jersey of all three major stage races, the last of which came in the 2010 Tour, which added to his longevity as a sprinter, and he is the third-winningest stage winner at the Grand Tours with 48 W's. Most of these, as I said, were picked up over that magical three-year run, and he hasn't aged as well as Cipollini, losing much of his pure speed these past couple of seasons.

Erik Zabel
Longevity above all, Zabel was the toughest of the sprinters in the early 00's. He won classics (Milan-San Remo several times, even though he lost one he should have won against Freire, plus Amstel God Race) and points jerseys (nine straight seasons with a points competition won from '96 to '04). But he often failed to dazzle. Several of his Tour de France points jerseys were won without a stage win - something that was shocking at first, but became the mark of the Zabel over the years - and only in his debut year, 1995, and perhaps in 1996-1997, could he have been counted among the fastest. The numbers are there, over a long career, so Zabel has to be in the sprinters' pantheon, though.

Mario Cipollini
We're not debating endurance here, nor the ability to finish Grand Tours. Cipollini rarely did, which is why he doesn't figure high at all on the all-time leaders in points competitions won. But we are debating sprinting ability, and Mario Cipollini not only was a pioneer in this domain, leading out his sprints with a ground-breaking 'train' strategy - i.e. he made his entire team prepare his own work in a meticulous and very precise manner. He was also a sprinting icon. For more than a decade, it was a point of reference for any sprinter if he had beaten Cipollini. Minali made his name like that. So did Quaranta. Tom Steels, too. And Petacchi at first.  Cipollini's Tour record isn't impressive (12 stage wins), but his Giro record is an astonishing 42 stages, which is an all-time record, and when everyone thought the Lion King was over and done, he delivered his best season ever in 2002, when he took Milan-San Remo, Gent-Wevelgem, six stage wins at the Giro - and the points jersey, and the World Championship. All at age 35. Nobody has ever had the relative versatility in a sprint that Cipollini had combined with his unique longevity. It's true Cipollini - in the years between 1998 and 2001 - had to rely a lot on his Saeco troops with strong leadoutmen such as Gian Matteo Fagnini to deliver him in the sprints, but over his career he could win sprints in many ways, and 2002 was a testiment to his ability to win races on his own. Especially Gent-Wevelgem.
Cipollini's personality deserves a chapter on its own, of course, with the glamour, the controversial statements, the larger-than-life presence which made him the most interesting sprinter even when there were faster men in the peloton. In many ways, this man, who's won more Grand Tour stages overall than anyone not named Eddy (at 57; Merckx has 64, and third-placed Petacchi has 48), is the definition of what a Super Sprinter should be like.

So compare these three guys to Cavendish. I count Zabel out from the get-go - he was never a point of reference for speed and ability the way the other guys were. Petacchi, too, as I believe his peak was too short for all-time superiority. Cavendish has been dominating for longer already, and he's much younger. Age comes into the picture when comparing Cavendish and Cipollini - where was Cipollini at 27? He had just started winning consistently in other races than the Giro, and his best years were clearly ahead of him. If the same holds true for Cavendish, all the other present sprinters are in big trouble. And so are all existing records of stages won. But who says it will?
Historically, it is really rare that a bike rider is a superstar at a very young age and keeps his performance level high for the duration of a long career. I believe Eddy Merckx is the latest rider to do that. Others who have kept a continued high performance level have either had more or less voluntary breaks in their careers (Armstrong, Pantani) or they have changed rider type altogether (the list is long, but counts legends like Jalabert and Museeuw). What I'm saying is that what's unique about Cipollini is that he has been a pure sprinter almost from day one of his career. Cavendish might very well do the same. But maintaining his performance level from the '09-'11 Tours for another decade - that seems not only unlikely, but downright ridiculous.

Technically, though, I like Cavendish's chances against Cipollini with both men at their peaks. A lot has been written about Cavendish's ability to avoid giving the guy behind him too much shelter, his fearlessness, and his extreme acceleration (something Cipollini lost right around his age 27 season....just saying). The way I see it, Cavendish in his prime is indeed the most dominant sprinter of all time. If you take away differences in lead-out conditions, it's not even close. Cavendish would annihilate Cipollini. Will he also go down as the most successful one? It is likely - though Cipollini probably still has the edge there.
I believe this is the only field in which cycling has been truly interesting in recent seasons. Considering Cavendish's status in the all-time Pantheon of sprinters. This, sadly, says even more about the sport of cycling than it does about Cavendish's tremendous performances.