Mario Cipollini has retired after one of the most remarkable careers of any cyclist in history. As a sprinter, he won just about every race he possibly could, including a record 42 stages of the Giro d'Italia. He also won the Milan-San Remo and Gent-Wevelgem classics in the same year, and has an endless list of wins in stage-races like the Tirreno-Adriatico, Paris-Nice, Tour of Valencia, Tour de Romandie and Tour Mediterranean. He won a total of 12 Tour de France stages - including four in the same race, 1999. And he won three stages of the 2002 Vuelta a España as well. It was his win in the 2002 World Road Championships that set the seal on Cipollini's glittering career, although in hindsight, becoming World Champion was also the beginning of the end for Mario. His form was never the same again, at 36 years of age it was to be expected one supposes. Cipollini won two stages of the 2003 Giro - equaling then surpassing Alfredo Binda's record at the time - but barely raced much after that time. He started again in 2004 with a new sponsor, and again in 2005 with Liquigas, with whom he managed to win a few smaller races in Qatar and Italy. Cipollini announced his retirement just a few weeks before the start of the 2005 Giro - his honesty quite humbling as he admitted he was no longer the fast-sprinter he used to be.

My own portfolio of Cipollini has a huge amount of space in my archive, one that I will always treasure having built down the years. Cipollini was winning stages of the Giro back in the early 1990's - when I was shooting black and white film! Over the following years, the images kept coming in - sprint-wins, crashes, podium delights like spraying the hostesses with sparkling wine or dressing in Ronaldo's Inter Milan soccer jersey. Cipollini was everything to a photographer that most cyclists are not. Ever smiling, ever serious - but ever so playful - Cipollini played to an audience that only he knew he had. And if ever his ego was at times hard to bear, the results from photographing such a character outweighed any other consideration. I once spent a day at his Tuscan home, actually on a rest-day of the 1997 Giro, and saw another Cipollini altogether. There, under the proud gaze of his grandfather and wife, Cipollini posed with an enviable array of animals, birds, cars, motorbikes and clothing - and showed off a small cabinet that contained over 40 Rolex watches! Cipollini is a man who will never be forgotten, least of all by me. At a time when his colleagues were fast becoming robots on wheels, Cipollini lightened up many a photographer's day - it has been a pleasure putting this tribute together.

Graham Watson

Part 1: Life on two wheels
Part 2: Mr. Showman