MOTHER OF GOD. Pantani 2023 is one week from basically right now. All the things I meant to do to be ready, I didn't do. Not one of them. It's tempting to raise the alarm, to fall into a fit of panic-training in an effort to be prepared in 7 days. You know what's coming, having been up and down this road a time or two. Fitness would be a convenient character trait on Sunday, 2/12 at 10 AM. But I'm old enough now to heed my own advice. At this point, if you've got it, then maybe you've got it. But if you haven't, you won't; you can't; so don't. I'm not saying don't show up. Oh heavens no, your participation, slovenly as it will be, is the only thing that might eventually teach you a lesson. But don't try to make something of yourself between now and Sunday. You'll stir up nothing but old injuries and apathy. Memories of times gone by. Dust and bones.
Multiple people sent me this photo of Paul Buschi on Pantani Sunday last year, huddled up next to the fire at Maybelle's in Dyke. In the photo, he's dirty, wet, and cold, ready for an extrication. Indeed, Pantani 2022, the Sunday version that went down Markwood rd into a 37 degree deluge, was more than even the mighty Paul Buschi could give. I gave the photo a quick nod the first time, in approval. Having bailed on my fair share of Pantani laps in the last 20 years, I thought I understood what the photo meant immediately, and I paid it little mind.
Recently, though, someone sent it to me again, and I gave it a closer look. Like many great works of art, the closer you look, the less certain you are.
Buschi's not actually frowning, I noticed. He's a little shelled, sure. It's really shitty outside. He's dirty, wet, cold. But you can see something else there too. A little upturn there at the corner of his mouth, that wild look in his eye. Beneath the shattered exterior, beneath the rain and the headwinds and the dirt and the cold, the dream goes on. The dream likes it.
One of Marco Pantani's more notable exploits was his raid at Les Deux Alpes at the Tour de France in 1998. In sheets of rain, the riders around him withered, their pink and blue jerseys, like a bad Easter, soaked and sagging down over their exposed ribs and elbows. Pantani, on the other hand, only seemed to get stronger as the day wore on. The worse it got, the better he was, flying up four categorized climbs into the history books, and into the yellow jersey. At the top of podium, he was resplendent, donning a fresh, warm yellow jersey, he gave the cameras a little wink. When he smiled, there was still dirt from the road in his teeth.
There are certain people that manage to ride like that. When things turn bad, they only get better. Adversity as an aphrodisiac. Tragedy is their triumph. Pantani, at times, managed to revel in that. It's like he needed the drama to be his best. It drove him to the brink.
I've seen Paul Buschi crash exactly once. We were at Giro D'Ville, maybe like 2009 or so. We were racing down what was basically a dry creekbed into Buena Vista, rock-strewn and exposed, and in places it was actually full of water. He passed me on a wide spot in trail, on one of those 5" travel Yeti 26ers, a teal blur against a background of pink rhododendron and iridescent green ferns. Those yetis back then were rugged machines, built low to the ground like tanks, and fast as fuck. I think he was going about 40 miles per hour. He crashed seconds later, already about 1/4 mile ahead. I think he caught a pedal on a rock and somersaulted downstream, end over end, his feet somewhere above and in front of his helmet. It remains one of the worst crashes I've ever seen. When the dust cleared, he was fine. I mean, he was a little dinged up. Some dirt up his nose. A little blood. He took his shirt off to check is collarbone, and it was basically the same level of broken and misshapen that it always was, ever since he took a chopper ride out of the North Fork in West Virginia years before. Another legend in the Book of Buschi.
As he saddled back up to ride down the trail into Buena Vista, we noticed something. Around 100 tiny, blue butterflies had converged on our spot, every single one of them finding a resting place on Buschi's driveside pedal. You couldn't see a even a piece of the SPD, only a shifting mass of sky blue insects as they skittered about and fluttered for a perch. At first, my brain grasped for a rational explanation. That if he'd nailed that pedal on a rock hard enough, there might have been a lingering vibration there which attracted all of the butterflies. Or maybe the friction had created a heated surface, a nice spot in the sun that a single butterfly had found, and the rest has simply joined. I was grasping at straws. What I was witnessing was pure greatness. Paul Buschi is an extraterrestrial. Things happen to riders like Buschi, or Pantani, that would kill the rest of us, and they keep right on going. Paul saddled up and rode down the trail and out into Buena Vista, and the butterflies trailed him all the way down.
That's why Lance Arnstrong hated racing Pantani. Why Buschi's record time down Whetstone, or Torry, or all his other exploits, will never be outdone. And really, it's why you should still show up for Pantani 2023 on Sunday, even if you'll never be like them.
Because you might beat the dreamer - maybe for a single day - but you'll never, ever beat the dream.
Up, up, up.
