The last timeIl Canto degli Italiani, the Italian national anthem, sounded at the end of a Grand Tour, it was May 29, 2016. In Turin, Vincenzo Nibali won the second Giro of his career, after winning a Vuelta (2010) and a Tour de France (2014). The probability of seeing the Sicilian in pink at the end of the 105and Tour of Italy (from May 6 to 29) is weak, but it remains a reference for the tifosi, the local media and a good part of the peloton.
It is « the only great athlete to have emerged on the Italian cycling scene since 2008 », recalls Matteo Monaco, secretary of the Italian Society for the History of Sport (SISS). However, in a country that has given birth to multiple cycling champions and made them icons, Vincenzo Nibali never reached this status, he explains.
In 2000, when Marco Pantani, the « Pirate », attacked in the last alpine stage of the Tour de France, in Morzine (Haute-Savoie), « all Italy stamping on his sofas ». The television news is interrupted and the live broadcast of the event starts three hours in advance. Fourteen years later, when Nibali triumphed on the Champs-Elysées, beyond the circle of cycling enthusiasts, “popular interest is practically nil”.
“After the death of Pantani [en 2004]something has changed in our perceptionsummarizes Mr. Monaco. Until then, cycling and its champions were part of the collective imagination. Today it has become a niche sport, although there are always thousands of fans on the streets at all Italian races. »
Atypical champion, easily recognizable with his shaved head, his protruding ears and his earring in his left ear, Marco Pantani had put an end, in 1998, to thirty-three years of Italian shortage on the Tour de France. Better still, he had signed a Giro-Grande Boucle double, which only six riders before him had achieved. A year later, he was excluded from the Giro, the day before the finish, when he dominated the event. In question: a blood test revealing a hematocrit level above the authorized limit. The episode will precipitate the end of his career. In 2004, he was found dead in a hotel room following an overdose.
The impact of the Pantani “affair”
« There is no doubt that the ‘Pantani affair’ has undermined and altered popular sentiment towards cycling in Italycontinues Matteo Monaco. Phrases such as “cyclists are all drug addicts” have become more common in bars. » Other cases, such as that of Riccardo Ricco, will stir up the mistrust of the general public a little more.
« The construction of a sporting myth is often done before the champion himself », argues the secretary of the SISS. Damiano Cunego paid the price: when he won the Giro, a few months after the disappearance of the Pirate, the Italians dubbed him as his successor. The interested party will find it difficult to meet expectations, despite good results.
Why did the story never take for Vincenzo Nibali? Matteo Moanco offers several explanations. The Sicilian’s lack of histrionics first, when Mario Pantani overplayed the slightest action: removing his bandana before sprinting or tearing off his diamond nose piercing during a duel with the Russian Pavel Tonkov… His regularity then – “His career has been marked by the idea of constant progression, and not by an immediate sporting boom that we observe among [Tadej] Pogacar, [Peter] Sagan or [Remco] Evenepoel”, advances the secretary of the SISS.
Competition, finally. The element may be the most determining: “All the Italian cyclists who became legends had equally strong antagonists: Bartali-Coppi, Saronni-Moser, Cipollini-Zabel, then Armstrong and Ullrich for Pantani. » Despite his successes – four Grand Tours and three Classics – Nibali has always been a divisive athlete: “On the one hand, those who said he was a phenomenon, and on the other, those who said he only won because of the absence of the strongest cyclists. »
« The perception of the heroism of the cyclist has been lost »
Beyond champion culture, « the perception of the ‘heroism’ of the cyclist, which made the greatness of this sport in the past, has also been lost », emphasizes Mr. Monaco. During the 1998 Tour de France, the 15and stage between Grenoble and Les Deux-Alpes had been epic. In the pouring rain, Marco Pantani had taken power in favor of the favorite of the race, Jan Ullrich, victim of a terrible failure.
This day had « has been reported in Italian newspapers as a ‘tragenda’ – a mixture of legend and tragedy ». Eight years later, when at the 2016 Giro Vincenzo Nibali caught more than four minutes in the snow on his direct rivals for the general classification, only cycling fans cheered.
Perhaps we should see there a consequence of an evolution of cycling, whose actors today « now seem to be pawns in the hands of their managers, the children of a strategy studied by computers rather than by instinct and direct man-to-man challenge asks Mr. Monaco. Who thinks that « to rekindle passion, a cyclist must emerge from stage races, perhaps a little daring, who knows how to inflame people’s minds ».