Tour de France 2024 | Stage 2 | Marco Pantani, a complex but lively myth

The shadow of Marco Pantani will hover over this Tour de France. It had already enveloped the last Giro, which passed through Cesena and the slopes of Oropa. But with this Grande Départ in Italy of the Grande Boucle, Pantani’s hour is ringing again. Between the finish on Saturday evening in Rimini, where Pantani left this world on a fatal Valentine’s Day, and who sets off this Sunday from Cesenatico, the city where he grew up and where his tomb is located, we are somewhere between homage and pilgrimage. Not to mention this legendary Giro-Tour double, which Tadej Pogacar is tackling and which no one has accomplished since the Pirate with the protruding ears.

Pantani, these are seven letters frozen in the legend of his sport. From the mountains, especially. Like Bahamontès. Names that smell of the slope, that resonate from the ice-capped walls of Stelvio to those, burning, of Alpe d’Huez. And so many others. In his life and in his death, Pantani forged his myth, very much alive two decades after his death, and leaves us a complex, ambivalent story, between fascination for what he was, and repulsion for an era that many refuse to accept. he is one of its incarnations. And yet.

The Italian’s career largely followed that of the EPO era, which arrived in the first half of the 90s, like him, before experiencing a kind of peak at the end of it, still like him. The 1998 Tour de France remains that of the Festina affair, of generalized gangrene, but Marco de Cesenatico still reigns supreme in the prize list of this edition of sinister memory. As if nothing had happened. As if nothing had happened. After him, just after him came the Lance Armstrong era and all that it drained. It has been erased from the history of the Tour. But not Pantani’s coronation. Are there good guys and bad guys? The devil who is banished and the little devil who is forgiven?

Texas is far away and that’s a good thing, but had it been next door, it’s hard to imagine Christian Prudhomme organizing the passage of the caravan and the peloton through the streets of Austin for a memorial procession. Did the Tour boss and his teams hesitate to come here by putting so much emphasis on what appears to be “the Pantani weekend”? “Marco Pantani is definitely light and shadowPrudhomme conceded this week. But his name is written hundreds of times on Italian roads, there is a fascinating side“.

Here we are. It is not a former winner that we come to celebrate here, but a form of myth. The man fascinated, the runner too, as if he came from another era. Pantani was timeless. Different from the leaders of his time, the Indurain, the Ullrich and the Armstrong, with whom he had to battle. It nourished the imagination. Perhaps this is why he was forgiven more than others.

In Italy, the sponge was less loaded and was largely passed over. At home, in this Emilia-Romagna of the Adriatic beaches, do not speak ill of Marco Pantani. There, no one will think of reducing him to a cheat who lost his soul in doping and his life in drugs. He remains a mythical hero by his flights of fancy, and a tragic hero by his very early death, at 34. In Cesenatico, where his statue imposes him on the Piazza Marconi standing on his pedals, dancing and climbing a sloping granite block, there is no controversy. The character is essential and loved.

In addition to the statue, Cesenatico is home to Pantani’s tomb and a museum to his glory and memory, whose director, Serena Boschetti, is none other than the late climber’s niece. “What surprises us is to see among the visitors children, young people who were not born when Marco was running. He still fascinates by his victories, his offensive style, his pirate look, with his bandana and his earrings, but also by his journey: he had so many injuries and struggles but he always managed to get back on track.“, she confided to AFP a few days ago.

Nothing, not even its darkest pages, such as his exclusion from the 1999 Giro for a hematocrit level above 50% two days before the finish when victory was promised to him, seems to have any influence on his legacy among his fans. Already at the time, many saw him more as the prisoner of a global system that turned its back on him than as a culprit. A victim, Pantani? Hell is other people, bastards too.

Even in death, the icon is debated. For 20 years. Officially, the theory of a cocaine overdose in this hotel room in Rimini remains the only one put forward. The family waged a long legal battle, convinced that Pantani was killed. In 2014, ten years after his death, the conclusions of the open counter-investigation confirmed the official thesis. But like Tonina, Marco’s mother, the anger never faded. Present this weekend, the arrival of the Tour tends to sharpen his pain more than it eases it. “Evil Doesn’t Go Away With a Tribute 20 Years Later“, she proclaims.

Complex and controversial, until the end and even beyond his death. Marco Pantani gave cycling incredible popularity at the end of the previous century. He contributed to its greatness but, like others, he also embodied a generation that did a lot of damage. She wasn’t responsible for everything, but to absolve her 100% is impossible. The system has broad shoulders, but to put everything on its back…

“I am too young to remember Pantani when he was alive, but I would love to accomplish what he did. I know how important he was for cycling in Italy and around the world.“So speaks Tadej Pogacar, whose quest for the Giro-Tour double helps to revive the memory of a champion who, from his power of fascination to his contradictions, remains apart.

Time is responsible for regulating each person’s inheritance. Pantani therefore continues to occupy a unique place. Because he was different, mysterious, and because he died young. There is Senna in his house. The two men left at the same age ten years apart. The Pantani myth. Pantani mythology. He was not a saint. His aura was bigger than his halo. In all his humanity, full of strengths and weaknesses, the Pirate endures.