Tour Analysis: The ex-rock star of cycling

As the head of the peloton got ready for the sprint in yesterday’s stage 13, I could sense that the everybody else was going for second place. Sitting perfectly in third wheel behind Geert Steegmans of QUICKSTEP and the latter’s leadout Steven de Jongh, the “Manxman Missile” Mark Cavendish peeled to the left just as Steegmans sprinted to the right. In just 200m, Cavendish gapped everybody and freewheeled to the line confident that he’d taken his third stage win in this year’s Tour. Cavendish’s burst of speed is so amazing that the phrase, “he passed by the rest like they were standing still” sounds hollow!

Cavendish’s three dominating sprint wins could be interpreted as the changing of the guards as the 23-yo Brit left behind the great sprinters of the past in Oscar Freire, Robbie McEwen and Thor Hushovd grasping for O2.

But just as we were about to usher the new, the ghost of the past could not be easily pushed aside. Riccardo Ricco, the brash Italian rider and winner of two Tour stages so far, had just received confirmation that he had tested positive for a new type of EPO called “CERA” and was taken away by the French police.

At 24yo, Ricco and Cavendish were supposed to be the rock stars cycling’s future, but unfortunately, Ricco flamed out just as his star had started to burn brightly.

Ricco’s positive should not be a surprise. He tried to turn pro in 2006 after having a great amateur career but wasn’t allowed to do so after several blood test showed his hematocrit levels exceeded those acceptable by the UCI. His future team director, Mauro Gianetti of SAUNIER DUVALL, suggested he spend a week in the UCI laboratory in Lausanne to prove that his blood values were natural. Further tests by the UCI confirmed that Riccò´s hematocrit level was naturally over 50% and Gianetti inked him.

Ricco did not disappoint as last year, he won a stage in the Giro and came close to winning the Giro d’Lombardia, a classic late season race in Italy. Unfortunately for Ricco, his mouth was also as fast as his legs and his attitude didn’t earn him any favors in the peloton. If he was on a breakaway, he would be chased down or his breakaway companions would stop working with him causing him to chastise the majority of the peloton at the 2007 Tirreno-Adriatocio for “riding like vegetables”. He even got the ire of veterans Paolo Bettini and Filippp Pozatto for his big mouth.

Interestingly, Ricco idolized the late Marco Pantani, the great Italian cyclist and the last rider to win the Giro d’Italia and the Tour in the same year in 1998. Last Sunday, Ricco said that, “Marco Pantani has been my hero since I was 14 years old. He was a great rider who won the Giro and the Tour. I still watch videotapes about him. I hope some day I can ride like him.” Well, Ricco has finally emulated Patani as a doper. I just hope that he won’t end up dead like Pantani, who at age 34 succumbed to cocaine overdose, alone, in a seedy hotel.