World War Cycling: Italy

The most public victim of the war is Italian legend Marco Pantani. The 1998 Tour de France winner was found alone in a hotel room on Valentine’s Day 2004, dead of acute cocaine poisoning aged 34.

While Pantani’s cause of death was a result of illicit rather than performance-enhancing drugs, doping played a major role in his downfall.

Check out the rest of World War Cycling
PART 1: The Prologue
PART 2: The United States of America
PART 4: Doping learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan
PART 5: Spain
PART 6: Germany and Denmark

The last man to win the Tour before Lance Armstrong’s seven stripped years also won the Giro d’Italia in 1998 – none have achieved the Giro/Tour double in the same year since (although Alberto Contador is attempting to at present).

Pantani was set to defend his Giro title in 1999, with a lead of over five-and-a-half minutes after 20 of 22 stages. However, after winning the penultimate mountain stage he was expelled from the race with a haematocrit level of 52.

Haematocrit is the percentage of red blood cells in the body. As EPO is a naturally occurring hormone, a test for synthetic EPO was difficult to create and not introduced until the 2000 Olympics. Prior to that, the only ‘test’ was a person’s haematocrit, and in 1997 the UCI determined anything higher than 50 per cent was abnormal.

But rather than call it outright doping, the UCI decided a haematocrit higher than 50 was a health issue – remember, many cyclists died from EPO use – and so the ‘punishment’ for a count higher than 50 was to expel the rider from the race and implement a two-week ban; officially for health and safety purposes.

So if you had a naturally high haematocrit – something in the 40s – you could ‘top up’ a little. But if your natural level was in the high 30s, EPO could give you an enormous boost.

“As one Italian team director put it, the new rule was the equivalent of allowing everyone to go into a bank and steal as long as they kept it under $1000.” – Tyler Hamilton, The Secret Race.

Officially, Pantani was not busted for doping, he was removed from the Giro for his health. But the implication was clear, and the rest of his team withdrew in protest.

Many, especially fans in his homeland, called Pantani’s expulsion a miscarriage of justice. There were whispers of Mafia involvement, suggesting an organised crime gambling conspiracy was behind the positive test.

Pantani returned to cycling in 2000, and famously clashed with Armstrong throughout the Tour, winning two stages, but ultimately had to withdraw due to stomach problems. It was to be his final Tour de France.

His latter years were marred by ongoing legal battles regarding his use of performance-enhancing drugs, and this in turn exacerbated his substance abuse.

On February 9, 2004, Pantani checked in to Le Rose hotel in the Italian seaside town of Rimini with 12,000 Euros cash. He made a series of phone calls and that evening a drug dealer came to his room, selling Pantani an estimated 30 grams of cocaine.

His body was discovered on February 14. He had trashed his room and barricaded himself inside, all the money was gone, white powder was found on the table, along with a veritable pharmacy of prescription drugs.

(For a full account of Marco Pantani’s tragic final days, check out Matt Rendell’s piece “The long, lonely road to oblivion”, or his book The Death of Marco Pantani.)

At his funeral, which was attended by 20,000 mourners, Pantani’s manager read excerpts Pantani had written during his final months:

“For four years I’ve been in every court. Rules, yes, but the same for everyone.”

Ultimately Pantani paid a price that dwarfs Armstrong’s disappearing millions, and he is remembered as the greatest climber of his generation – one of modern cycling’s heroes.

But the only way to win a Grand Tour against a peloton full of dopers is to dope. And while Pantani denied ever having used PEDs, a 2013 report from the French Senate found Pantani had been using EPO during the 1998 Tour de France.

Pantani has not been stripped of his title as champion of the 1998 Tour.

Rules, yes, but the same for everyone.

Armstrong did not enter the 1998 Tour de France, his first Grand Tour on the comeback trail from cancer was the 1998 Vuelta a Espana (his fourth place has since been stripped, although a re-shuffle of lower placings has not occurred; the history books simply show no one came fourth that year).

However by this stage, he was already working with a man who would prove pivotal to his future success: Dr Michele Ferrari.

In 1994 Ferrari had been the doctor for the Gewiss team, and following a dominant performance in which the entire podium went to members of the team, the Italian doctor spoke to French newspaper l’Equipe.

While denying he ever prescribed EPO, he also said, “EPO is not dangerous, it’s the abuse that is. It’s also dangerous to drink 10 litres of orange juice.”

The interview cost him his job with Gewiss, but told the cycling world they knew where to go if they wanted results. He set up a private practice in 1995 and began working as a consultant for teams and individuals.

It is true that Dr Ferrari’s results came about via doping, but to portray him as a mere drug dealer does no justice to the man. He was a student of human performance, and broke down every aspect of it into a calculable number. As Hamilton wrote, “Ferrari approached you like you were an algebra problem that needed solving… He was interested only in body weight, fat percentage, wattage (the measure for power – basically how much force you put into the pedals), haematocrit.”

Ferrari was also the best at ‘solving’ how to avoid detection, and a pioneer of micro-dosing – a practice whereby small amounts of drugs are injected over a longer period, minimising the window of time in which a cyclist would get caught if tested.

(Micro-dosing is still thought to be present in the modern peloton. French TV station Stade 2 recently conducted a televised experiment, showing how micro-dosing can be used to beat the UCI’s most effective doping control, the biological passport.)

While Ferrari’s most famous client was Lance, he worked with many within the peloton. As a result, his reputation went beyond cycling and put a target on his back with the anti-doping authorities, particularly in his home country.

In 2004 Ferrari was found not guilty of providing cyclists with performance-enhancing drugs, but was convicted of malpractice, given a suspended 12-month jail sentence, and barred from practicing for the better part of a year.

As a result, Lance publicly ended his association with Ferrari, while noting, “Dr Ferrari was acquitted of the charge of providing illegal drugs to athletes.”

In late 2006 Ferrari had his conviction overturned and was able to return to cycling, where he continued to work his ‘magic’.

In 2007 he consulted for the Italian Liquigas team, and in 2011 cyclist Leonardo Bertagnolli gave a sworn statement to police outlining how Ferrari showed he and his teammates both how to dope, and how to avoid detection.

An on-going investigation into doping in Padua, Italy, revealed in late 2014 a list of 38 riders who worked with Ferrari in 2010 and 2011. Included in the 38 are 2011 Giro winner Michele Scarponi (who inherited first place after Alberto Contador had it stripped as a result of doping), 2012 Olympic road race gold medallist Alexandre Vinokourov (who is now manager of Team Astana), and Denis Menchov, who won the 2005 and 2007 Vuelta and 2009 Giro, but has since had his 2009, 2010 and 2012 Tour results stripped due to adverse findings in his biological passport.

Officially Ferrari’s association with cycling came to a grinding halt in 2012, when the USADA released their Reasoned Decision and barred the Italian for life. Yet his spectre continues to loom large over the sport.

In late 2014, Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the Padua investigation had discovered a photograph of Ferrari at a training camp with Astana in 2013.

While the photo has not been published, and both Ferrari and Astana have denied the link, some could argue the association with ‘Lance’s doping doctor’ played a part in the UCI’s decision earlier this year to begin the process of revoking Astana’s license.

Next week: Kazakhstan, Alexandre Vinokourov and Astana Pro Team – the heirs to US Postal Service.