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  Massi strikes the jackpot Casino's new team member completes his comeback
Posted: Wednesday July 22, 1998 12:40 PM
Special from L'Equipe, the French sports daily PARIS (L'Equipe) -- The Casino team's perfect racing benefited 33-year-old Rodolfo Massi, who has undergone a metamorphosis since he joined the French team. When he sprinted his way up the last 200 yards of the Aubisque with fellow countryman and teammate Alberto Elli, Rodolfo Massi couldn't imagine that three climbs and 143 kilometers farther, he would pocket his most beautiful win ever at the age of 33, in one of the 1998 Tour de France's big stages. The two Italians of the Casino team broke away at the top of the climb and increased their lead once they'd come back up to Cedric Vasseur. The Italian pair held last year's yellow jersey hostage. "We were way too far from Luchon, and it was out of the question to go for a stage win, we had to work for our leader, Bo Hamburger," Massi confirmed. But Jan Ullrich and his Telekom teammates were satisfied with holding their attack in check from a distance, and the gap reached seven minutes. The two Casino riders had their own ups and downs. Massi was trailing his fellow escapees on the way up the Tourmalet. "I hadn't eaten enough, and I really didn't think I could go very far. On the way down the Aubisque, in light rain and fog, I'd already been very, very scared. Yet after the Tourmalet my legs were back and then Elli started to weaken," Massi said. The tactics became clear to Casino assistant coach Laurent Biondi, who was following the riders closely. "We decided to sacrifice Alberto," he said. But to make sure they didn't let the jackpot get away, the Casino riders needed to continue to let Vasseur think he was surrounded. No matter how brave the Frenchman was, he had to surrender six kilometers before the top of the Aspin, following Massi's attack. According to Biondi, Massi finished the climb with a bad chain. It's true that his gear ratio looked unusual, but he had enough energy left to contain Marco Pantani's counter-attack. "Near the end, I had cramps, and until the very end I was scared that Pantani would come back to me," Massi confessed.
The pirate was 38 seconds behind Massi at the top of the stage's last climb, and his decent was vertiginous. "On the way down, I had to let Pantani, who impressed me, pass. He was going down in a hurry, at 80 kph," Biondi added. But at the finish line, Pantani was still 36 seconds behind. "If Rodolfo lost almost no time, it means he must have descended extraordinarily too, and it's not one of his strengths," Bondi said. Ending up at the front, on one's own, in one of the Tour de France's bigPyrenees stages, can give one wings. Massi had never flown so much before Casino coach Vincent Lavenu recruited him last season, following advice from the team's doctor/trainer, Daniele Tarsi. "Daniele was with Rodolfo in 1996 with the Refin team, and he insisted that he should follow him because he knew his athletic and moral qualities," Bondi said. To Biondi, Massi is "a charming man, very professional, very meticulous and demanding concerning details." Tarsi's advice quickly pleased Lavenu. Massi demonstrated strong abilities, on hilly terrain among others, winning the Tour du Haut Var last year and the Criterium International's mountain stage four months ago. Yet Massi's career almost ended before it even started. 10 years ago, on May 27, 1988, in his second professional season, with the Alba Cucine team, he had avery serious accident on the Giro d'Italia. While the pack went through Santa Maria Capvavetere, close to Napoli, he hit a Roman arch one kilometer before the finish line. The historical vestige, the Arco di Traiano, left him broken, his thighbone and collarbone crushed. He even ended up with one leg shorter than the other one, which forced him to change the way he pedals. In 1993, he broke his collarbone again, and only willpower allowed him to get back on track. He's had to put himself into question all the time, and is competing for his eighth different team in 12 seasons. He even raced for Amore e Vita, the team supported by the Vatican, for which he got his first professional win in the 1997 Semana Sicilianna, seven years after his professional debut. And so that is how the Casino team, through an unknown rider, got their second stage win in three days, their 45th of the season. In spite of them, in spite of everything, the Tour seems to be over. Not so to Massi. "It seems to me that Pantani hasn't lost yet. He's going to keep on trying everything he can to break the Telekom's defense. And so are we," he said. Copyright (c) 1998 L'Equipe
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