'It was clear he was special' - Growing up with Marco Pantani

As the Tour de France leaves Cesenatico on stage two of its historic Grand Départ in Italy, the race is paying homage to Marco Pantani, a rider, who not only won the Tour, but marked a generation. But the Tour start in this seaside town along the Adriatic Sea will have special meaning for Andrea Agostini and Gian Paolo Mondini, two childhood friends and amateur teammates to Pantani.

Today both Agostini and Mondini are both actively working in the sport as Agostini is chief operating officer UAE Team Emirates, while Mondini is team liaison for Specialized. But both remain close due to their roots here in the Emilia-Romagna region and their connection to Pantani.

“You cannot say Cesenatico without saying Marco Pantani,” says Agostini. “I started riding a bike with Marco at 11 and was on all of the amateur teams with him until I was 22. We actually met earlier. We got in a big fight at school one day, and then after that we were friends for life.”

Agostini remembers fondly Pantani’s jovial side. “He really loved to have fun, and he just loved to compete. He was always making bets. If we were in a sauna, it was who can stay in the sauna longest. If we were on the beach it was who is going to build the best sandcastle. I remember once we did this pedal-boat race called the Nove Scogli, where the two of us pedaled in this little boat. Boy did we want to win! We really tried, and I can tell you that we were frustrated when we didn’t.”

According to Agostini, Pantani dreamed of being a professional almost as soon as he started racing. “Marco was really clear in his mind that he wanted to be a professional. It wasn’t always easy because, growing up in Cesenatico, we were living on the beach and in the summer, it was easy to just want to hang. We are Romagnoli, and we are known for having fun and spending a lot of time with our friends. But Marco had this ability to make time for both. There were times when he was really into having fun. But when he wanted to get results, he was so focused. He would just close himself in his house and if he wasn’t training he was working on his bike. He was always drilling out parts of the bike to make it lighter. And he loved to compete.”

Mondini joined Pantani and Agostini on the Giacobazzi team in Pantani’s final year as an amateur, and the climbing specialist left an instant mark. “It was already clear there was something special, something different as a rider,” Mondini remembers. “When it came to climbing, he was just so clearly on another level. We could be riding at 40 kilometers an hour on the flats, and when we started climbing, Marco would just keep the speed. It was simply impossible to follow him.”

While the three split the following year, they reunited when Pantani was an established star. Agostini, stopped cycling to pursue his studies in economics and marketing management, while Mondini turned professional himself. But Agostini would later become Pantani’s press officer and Mondini would join him on the Mercatone-Uno team.

But while Pantani had gone on to win both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in 1998, both Agostini and Mondini remembered how Pantani struggled with the pressures of stardom. “When we were in Cesenatico he was just Marco, but when we were at the races he was Pantani,” Agostini recalls. “Everything was a fight. Everything was too much for him. He was a completely different person.”

Pantani, of course, was one of the most charismatic yet complicated figures in the sport. He fostered a certain aura of mystery and detachment, and he had a penchant for referring to himself in the third person. It fit perfectly with his acquired nickname Il Pirata, or ‘The Pirate’. But he had a unique rapport with his fans, who could predict his attacks by the color of bandana he wore on a given day. In addition, his explosive climbing style was so effortless and incisive that he was sometimes compared to the historic Italian champion Fausto Coppi. But while his career ended in tragedy, his legend is one of the most resonant in the sport, his fans remain deeply devoted to him.

Though Agostini still swims in the sea of memories of their life together, he still struggles to come to terms with Pantani’s tragic demise. As his press officer, he was with Pantani on June 5, 1999, when, with the Maglia Rosa on his shoulders, he was expelled from the Giro after producing an adverse hematocrit level. It proved to be an abrupt beginning to Pantani’s decline, one that finished less than five years later, when he died of a cocaine overdose on February 14, 2004.

“He lost himself at a certain point,” Agostini says. “After June 5, 1999, something just broke that day. In the beginning, we tried to talk with him. But he didn’t want to listen to anyone.”

Mondini joined Pantani on the Mercatoni-Uno team in 2001 at Pantani’s request. “To be honest, I had no choice. I mean, I couldn’t say no to Marco,” Mondini says with a laugh. “But I could already see that being Marco Pantani, was not easy for him. The pressures of him were just really hard for him to deal with. There was real weight on his shoulders.”

Even today, both are still haunted by Pantani’s demise, and they both remember the last time they saw him. “I saw him late in the summer of 2003. He said to me, ‘I don’t want to fight any more. I’ve lost.’ That moment just broke my heart,” says Mondini. “And it still does today.”

But while both are still marked by Pantani’s death, they still cherish the many great moments with one of the sport’s most memorable riders. And as the Tour de France rolls out of Cesenatico on stage two, both Agostini and Mondini will be filled with their own memories of Marco Pantani.