21st anniversary of Marco Pantani's death: Double, crash and conspiracies - the legacy of the pirate

Many people are likely to be drawn to Cesenatico again on Valentine's Day. But not for romantic reasons, although affection and love do play a role to a certain extent. It is about the memory of a dead man, Marco Pantani. 50,000 people are said to visit his grave in the Italian municipality every year, many of whom come on the anniversary of his death. Pantani died on 14 February 2004 at the age of 34.

Much has been written and speculated about his final days since then. The most common account: on 9 February, Pantani moved into a flat in the "Le Rose" hotel in the coastal town of Rimini, room 5D. He allegedly hardly left the accommodation afterwards, only for breakfast, and is said to have taken 20,000 euros from the bank once. On the day of his death, he phoned the hotel reception several times, complaining about noise from the neighbouring rooms, although no one was staying there. Pantani had long since thrown away the compass for his life at this point. He was dead by 4 pm. Around five hours later, a hotel employee discovered his body. The result of the autopsy: heart failure caused by a lethal mixture of antidepressants and cocaine.

Marco Pantani's life was a tragedy

"For four years, I have been familiarising myself with Italy's courtrooms and have lost confidence in the justice system. My private life has been heavily interfered with, I have paid a high price for cycling and no longer enjoy it," wrote Pantani in what appears to be his last letter, which was found in his hotel room. Instead of cycling races, his public image had been characterised by criminal doping proceedings since 2000: Prosecution, sentence, ban and then appeal. A cycle of humiliation, at least that's how Pantani felt.

His life was a tragedy. Pantani reached the highest heights as a cyclist, winning the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France within a few weeks in 1998, but at the same time fell into human depths off the road, from which he was unable to find his way out at some point. Despite this, many of his compatriots stuck by him to the end. Italy revered him, nicknamed him "il pirata" because of his headscarf and called him "Elefantino" because of his protruding ears.

Pantani's funeral procession accompanied by 30,000 people

Perhaps it was precisely the contradictions that attracted people: visually and on the bike, Pantani was an eccentric, but in real life he was more introverted and sometimes shy. Even if he often seemed unapproachable, he touched people in a way. Especially as he was not a classic winner, but seemed to have more bad luck than good. That also increased sympathy. "There may be riders who have achieved more than him, but they never managed to inspire the fans like he did," said Miguel Indurain, five-time Tour winner between 1991 and 1995, after Pantani's death.

The funeral procession a few days later to the cemetery in Cesenatico was accompanied by around 30,000 people, including friends, fans and sports celebrities. The media were not welcome. "Go away, you killed him," Pantani's mother Tonina shouted to the journalists at the time. With Pantani's death, the suspicions, the questions about who was responsible - and the theories that he was murdered - began immediately. To this day, this is also part of his legacy.

Pantani signed his first professional contract with the Italian team Carrera in 1992 and made his first sporting headlines in 1994 with two stage wins and second place in the Giro d'Italia and third place in the Tour de France. His uphill starts were notorious: he grabbed the lower part of the handlebars, got out of the saddle, threw his body forwards and sprinted off in a pedal stroke. In 1995, he took his first stage win in L'Alpe d'Huez at the Tour de France. However, every high point for Pantani was always followed by a setback, and this continued throughout his career: In autumn 1995, he collided with a car on a training ride and broke both legs. Pantani had to take a break for a year and a half.

Pantani rides away from Jan Ullrich after Les Deux Alpes

He celebrated his successful return in 1997 with another victory in L'Alpe d'Huez - the record time for the climb of 37:35 minutes still stands today. This comeback later inspired the author Fred Poulet on the book "21 Curves"Pantani and the myth of Alpe d'Huez illuminated in 21 chapters.

Pantani finished the Tour in third place. Twelve months later, he was at the top in Paris, with a yellow-coloured chin beard and yellow jersey. A moment for cycling history: After winning the Giro d'Italia a few weeks earlier, Pantani also won the Tour de France; the seventh and so far last rider to achieve the infamous double. In the run-up to the race, Jan Ullrich was considered the big favourite for the yellow jersey, but Pantani went on the offensive early on the queen stage to Les Deux Alpes and took almost nine minutes off Ullrich and the Tour victory.

The Italian had thus become one of the greats in cycling. However, every high was followed by a low for Pantani. At first, however, the 1999 Giro d'Italia seemed to be his masterpiece, Pantani dominated, won four stages and wore pink. Then, on the morning of the penultimate stage, the police stopped at his team hotel. His haematocrit value in a blood test was 52, above the limit of 50, and Pantani was excluded from the race.

When his haematocrit was too high, he was only suspended for 15 days, but it complicated his whole life and he never got over it. He was never the same again. - Miguel Indurain after Pantani's death.

There was already plenty of evidence that Pantani doped during his career. In 2000, an Italian court sentenced him to a three-month suspended prison sentence and a six-month professional ban for sports fraud - Pantani had already been found to have elevated haematocrit levels in 1995, which the court considered to be sufficient evidence of doping abuse. A year later, the sentence was overturned on appeal, as his offence was not yet punishable under the doping laws at the time.

Offended and bitter - Pantani's handling of the doping allegations

The Italian Cycling Federation later banned him for eight months because a banned insulin syringe was found in his hotel room during the 2001 Giro. This judgement was also overturned on appeal. Another trial was held because of the haematocrit values at the 1999 Giro. Pantani always denied everything, the natural reflex of the time. But nobody seemed as offended, embittered and personally attacked by the doping allegations as he was. "I will never be able to forget the mental pain that this country inflicted on me with these unjustified accusations," Pantani once said. In 2013, the French Senate published an investigation report according to which Pantani was one of the 18 riders who tested positive for EPO after the 1998 Tour.

After the 1999 Giro, Pantani withdrew for almost a year, but made a comeback at the 2000 Tour de France with two stage wins: he won the mountain arrival at Mont Ventoux and another stage after Courcheval. These were to be his last victories. Instead, he made headlines for causing three car accidents in one afternoon.

In 2003, he started another comeback at the Giro d'Italia and finished in a respectable 14th place. However, his high hopes of returning to the Tour were not fulfilled: the organisers did not want him to take part in the 100th anniversary edition and his team did not receive an invitation. In a way, this signalled the end of Pantani as a professional cyclist.

Shortly afterwards, he went to a clinic for depression and drug addiction; he had put on weight in the meantime and was considered a cocaine addict. And he isolated himself more and more from the people he actually needed. These were all signposts that finally led him to Rimini in February 2004.

Did the Mafia play a role in the 1999 Giro?

If you look for the beginning of his downfall, then it is probably the 1999 Giro. Pantani is said to have felt robbed of this victory until his death. This sense of injustice ate deep into his mind. The why behind his exclusion, it is said, never left Pantani's mind. This is where the rumours and conspiracies surrounding his death began. Among other things, it involves the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, illegal betting and huge sums of money. According to the rumours, Pantani was not allowed to win the 1999 Giro under any circumstances. So he was withdrawn from the race.

His family never believed it was suicide anyway. "Marco wasn't alone in the room when he died," his mother claimed, "he was in someone's way. He wanted to testify about doping and that disturbed someone." The parents called in experts to gather evidence of murder. In 2014, the public prosecutor's office even opened an investigation, but Italy's highest court came to the judgement that the murder theory was "pure fantasy".

In 2021, however, new investigations became public, this time actually relating to the mafia - a murder case against unknown persons based on information from the Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission. However, there have been no new reports on the case since then.

20 years after his death, there is still no peace around Pantani. For his followers, however, Pantani the athlete remains unforgotten. Some of them will visit his grave in Cesenatico again on 14 February. To pay their respects to the Pirates.