Pantani enjoys day in the sun

Just a mile from crossing the line here to win his second stage in the heart of the Trois Vallees ski resort area, Marco Pantani entered a short tunnel underneath a verdant piste, and emerged from pitch darkness into bright, if chilly, sunlight 6,000ft above sea level. As an image of what the diminutive shavenheaded Italian has achieved in the past 2 1/2 weeks it could not be bettered.

The 1998 Tour winner has spent the past 13 months swamped by drugs allegations and in depression after being thrown off last year's Tour of Italy for failing a blood test.

He continually postponed his return to competition and made an abortive return in February. In March he announced he was taking a break to escape the pressure and was expected to quit the sport.

The allegations have yet to be disproved and Pantani faces a court case in Italy in December, but his ambition for this Tour - fare una buona figura (to make a good impression) - has been achieved in some style.

If Thursday's win atop Mont Ventoux's moonscape was a gift from Lance Armstrong, who now looks set to win his second Tour at the end of the week, yesterday's triumphant ride to the highest chalets of Courchevel held echoes of the Tours of 1995, 1997 and 1998, when the man they called "the little pirate" could ride away from the field seemingly at will.

Armstrong, who had looked far stronger than Pantani at the Ventoux and in Saturday's massive stage into Briancon, was eventually left behind, a feat Pantani was determined to achieve before the race ends. So too, equally symbolically, was the man wearing the King of the Mountains jersey, the Colombian Santiago Botero, who had conquered the rock pinnacles of the Izoard pass, one of the Tour's mythic places for its connections with greats such as Fausto Coppi, on his way to victory the day before.

Pantani has always made it clear that his interest lies in mountain stage victories and in creating spettacolo (spectacles) rather than claiming mere jerseys.

There is, however, no light at the end of the tunnel for Jan Ullrich, until yesterday Armstrong's main challenger, now seven minutes 26 seconds behind, and merely one among several scrapping for second. But after the field had ridden past the remains of overnight snow on the Galibier pass, the so-called roof of the Tour at 9,000 feet, the Texan looked vulnerable on the toughest pass of the day, the 13mile slog to the meadows of the Col de la Madeleine.