Pantani found dead (TDFR)

[Schmear]

Marco Pantani found dead
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/othe...ng/3489569.stm

Italian cycling star Marco Pantani has been found dead in a hotel in Rimini. The 34-year-old climbing specialist, nicknamed the "pirate", won the 1998 Tour de France and Giro d'Italia.

But his career was blighted by doping allegations after he was thrown out of the 1999 Giro d'Italia for failing a blood test.

"I'm devastated, it's a tragedy of enormous proportions for the entire cycling world," said fellow cyclist Mario Cipollini.

The coach of the Italian national cycling team Franco Ballerini said: "It's something that is so huge, it doesn't seem true."

Pantani, who spent the last few years fighting for his reputation, last raced in the 2003 Giro, finishing 14th.

But soon after he entered a health clinic specialising in the treatment of depression and drug addiction.

Pantani was the first Italian to win the Tour de France, cycling's premier race, since Felice Gimondi in 1965.

Gimondi told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport: "I am shocked and traumatised.

"Marco has paid a very dear price for everything. For years he was in the eye of the cycling after being world number one.

"He then withdrew into himself. He was alone."

Pantani was also the last man to win the race before American Lance Armstrong embarked on a record-equalling five straight victories.

But his career went into free-fall when he was ejected from the 1999 Giro while in the lead after failing a test for haematocrit - an indicator, though not proof, of the use of performance-enhancing drugs.


Scandal followed Pantani, and during the 2001 Giro a syringe containing traces of insulin was found in his hotel room in a police raid.

Pantani insisted the syringe had been planted and that he did not stay in the room on the night in question.

A court dismissed his claim for lack of proof, and he was suspended for six months but he was acquitted of sporting fraud in October last year.

Pantani's team Mercatone Uno were not invited to take part in the centenary Tour de France last year.

Pantani, who was also third in the Tour in 1994 and 1997, began his career with the Carrera team.

[Schmear]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/835000...pantarm300.jpg

[Steven S. Dallas]

Thank God, for a second I thought it said "Punani found dead."

Too bad, though, especially because it looked like he was on the comeback trail with that good finish in the Giro last year.

[L7]

Holy , that sucks! It will be interesting to see what post mortem shows. Too many top cyclists dying too young over the last few years. I always thought he had heart on the hills at least and when he was on form he brought the level of comp up a notch or three.

[Theodore]

I thought it said the same thing. I always liked his racing style, attacking in the mountains.

Ted

[Viva]

Originally posted by L7
Too many top cyclists dying too young over the last few years.

In Europe today, a 21 year-old cyclist (I think a member of a junior or development squad) was found dead in bed, reportedly of natural causes.


I remember that Marco was tosed from either the Tour or the Giro a few years ago due to having a high hematocrit. However there was no way to determine whether or not this was the result of his unique physiology or induced by drug use (i.e., EPO).

As far as drug use goes, it's not for me to judge him. I will remember the rider that he was- some of those mountain stages and the time trial in the 98 Tour come to mind immediately.

http://www.velonews.com/images/news/5556.6880.t.jpg

[trainnvain]

RIP. Ride fast and charge hard in the heavens Marco. You were a great contribution.

[wookalar]

wow

that's terrible....

[Tavi]

Originally posted by Viva
In Europe today, a 21 year-old cyclist (I think a member of a junior or development squad) was found dead in bed, reportedly of natural causes.

Let me guess: natural causes with a high hematocrit and a heart that basically exploded in his sleep? Sounds like a poor mix on the cocktail. The facts are that all cyclists at the highest level have to get their hematocrit as close to the cut off as possible in order to be competitive. That does not happen naturally. Even sleeping and training out of Leadville Colorado will not get your counts up that high. It's just one of the realities of professional sports. Pantani just got caught in the past.

I'm not saying Pantai's early death has anything to do with blood doping. I don't know the facts. He was a great cyclist and competitor, not to mention fun to watch.

RIP

[L7]

Originally posted by Viva
In Europe today, a 21 year-old cyclist (I think a member of a junior or development squad) was found dead in bed, reportedly of natural causes.


http://www.velonews.com/images/news/5556.6880.t.jpg

That makes at least 5 up and coming cyclists dead under similar conditions in the last 1.5 years. All 20 - 26 years old and that doesn't include Pantani.

The use of EPO is wide spread there is no doubt in my mind and I certainly suspect the use is about 100%. I certainly don't know it for fact but if it comes out as such I won't be surprised.

It has to stop. Seeing Pantani go when he still might have come back sucks but worse yet how many of the younger guys who are gone might have been Pantanis or Armstrongs or Indurains?

[Schmear]

More info....
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=1735252

ROME -- An autopsy will take place on Monday to determine the cause of death of former Tour de France winner Marco Pantani, who was found in a hotel room in central Italy with a large amount of sedatives near his bed.

The cause of death of the 34-year-old rider, who won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour in 1998, was not immediately known but investigators ruled out violence.

Police in the Adriatic resort of Rimini told reporters that there were no illegal drugs in the room when Pantani's body was discovered on Saturday night, but four types of tranquillizers were found near the body and in the kitchen section.

They told a news conference that 10 packages of prescription sedatives were found, some empty and some partially used.

A staff member of the hotel in the Adriatic resort of Rimini, just down the coast from his home town of Cesenatico, found Pantani on the floor. Pantani was wearing jeans and was naked from the waist up.

Magistrate Paolo Gengarelli told reporters that Pantani, who had been treated at a clinic recently for depression, had written "some thoughts" on hotel stationery but it was not a farewell note.

He said the rider, whose later career was blighted by doping accusations, had effectively secluded himself in the room for five days and left it only for breakfast.

The death of Pantani, who was nicknamed 'The Pirate' because of his trademark shaved head and bandana, shocked the sporting world.

"This is a tragedy of enormous proportions for the whole cycling world," said Mario Cipollini, winner of the 2002 world road race championship. "I can't find the words."

A sash on one of the many bunches of flowers left at the hotel read: "Farewell Pirate, you will remain forever in our hearts."

The headline in the Italian sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport said it all: "Lost Hero, We Adored You".

Pantani, a fine climber, won both the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1998. He was the first Italian to win the Tour de France since Felice Gimondi in 1965.

He finished third in the Tour twice.

Former Italian World Cup ski champion Alberto Tomba said Pantani had been abandoned.

"It's a real tragedy. For champions it is too easy to go from being loved and exalted to being hated. I think Pantani found himself alone at the precise moment that he was in the most need," Tomba said.

AC Milan were playing with black arm bands in honor of the rider, who was one of their fans.

Spain's five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain described Pantani as a "tragic genius".

"Apart from his undeniable quality as a rider, he got people hooked on the sport," Indurain said of the specialist climber in the Spanish sports daily Marca.

"There may be riders who have achieved more than him, but they never succeeded in drawing in the fans like he did."

Indurain said that Pantani's career had been scarred by the controversy surrounding the 1999 Giro when he was thrown out of the race for failing a test for haematocrit -- an indicator, though not proof of the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The last years of his life were spent in legal battles fighting to see doping bans overturned.

"He paid a very high price. For four years he was at the center of a storm," said Gimondi, who was Pantani's manager for two years.

"When he had the test for haematocrit he was eventually only banned for 15 days, but it ended up complicating his whole life and he was never able to get over it. He was never the same again," Indurain said.

Pantani was banned in 2002 for using insulin during the previous year's Giro.

He rode in the 2003 Giro, finishing a disappointing 14th, and was later treated in a drugs and depression clinic.

His last Tour was in 2000 when won two stages including one to the summit of Mont Ventoux where he beat eventual overall winner Lance Armstrong.

Pantani's team, Mercatone Uno, were not invited to take part in the centenary Tour de France last year.

Pantani, who was born in the same central coastal region where he died, made his professional debut in 1992 and shot to fame three years later by daring to attack the great Indurain in the mountains of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France.

He also took the bronze at the world championships.

The same year, he shattered his left fibula and tibia in a crash after being hit by a jeep and injured his collarbone, wrist, arms, foot and ribs as well as suffering from concussion and a dislocated shoulder.

He made his first comeback in 1997, but three months later he returned to hospital after a crash caused by a cat running across his path during the Giro, leaving him badly bruised.

Starting from scratch once again, the next year he won both of the world's cycling classics -- the Giro and the Tour.

His troubles began again in 1999 when he was disqualified while leading the Giro after failing the haematocrit test.

In 2000 he was found guilty of "sporting fraud" after tests showed use of illegal performance-enhancing products. He was fined and banned from competing for six months.

During the 2001 Giro, Italian drugs police raided riders' hotel rooms, confiscating illegal substances. Pantani was put under investigation after police found a syringe containing insulin at hotel where he stayed.

[bad_roo]

I'll remember the man next time I drive up the 21 hairpins to Alpe d'Huez. RIP.

[MT]

Man, that's really too bad. Although pirates are not held in high esteem here, Marco was one bad mutherfuckin pirate.

[truth]

Very sad news. One of the greatest sports true legends is gone.

[Cornholio]

Originally posted by Schmear
AC Milan were playing with black arm bands in honor of the rider, who was one of their fans.

That's classy.

Tragic news, though... I loved watching him race.

[truth]

Marco Pantani, the Italian cycling champion who died alone in a hotel room on Valentine's Day, "appeared" to have died from a heart attack after taking large quantities of sedatives, the medical expert conducting the post mortem examination said today.



Giuseppe Fortuni, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Bologna University, said that he would issue his definitive findings only after several days of analysis, and if necessary would take the 60 days allowed by law before delivering his final verdict.

Francesco Toni, the coroner, also said that he believed Pantani had died of "cardio-circulatory arrest" and had not deliberately committed suicide.

But evidence has emerged that the hotel room in Rimini where he was found dead had been smashed up.

Police said that he had died at five in the afternoon but had been found at only 9.30pm when the night porter tried to enter the room and found furniture stacked up against door.

Pantani was lying on the floor, naked from the waist up, with blood on his face.

Police said that two chairs were broken and the edge of a wooden table was cracked. Pantani had left nine pages of testimony in a notebook, although Paolo Gengarelli, the prosecutor, insisted they did not amount to a suicide note.

In the notes Pantani said there was a conspiracy against him. "I was the only one they struck at," he said. "Nobody has understood me, not even my family."

Hotel staff said that the phone in Pantani's room was off the hook when he was found. The switchboard operator said she had tried to put a call through, but he had told her to "leave me alone".

He also left a note to his former Danish girlfriend Kristine, a disco dancer, who left him when he was at the height of his fame.

The room contained ten bottles of tranquillisers and anti-depressants, police said, as well as a "white powder" which Il Giornale said was "certainly not talcum powder".

"This is how he kept his demons at bay" said La Repubblica.

Oliver Laghi, the owner of nearby restaurant and a keen amateur cyclist, said he had taken a ham and mushroom omelette to Pantani's room last Friday evening.

"He was one of my heroes, but I was shocked. I managed to stutter something like: 'Come on, keep your chin up, you're better than all of them.'

"He patted me on the shoulder and I told him the meal was on me and it was an honour to serve him. I'm not even sure he undersood what I said, he looked so strange."

The latest revelations will add to the sense of national trauma which has seized Italy since Pantani's body was found on Saturday.

Banner newspaper headlines suggested he had been "desperate, lonely and misunderstood" after a long battle to prove that accusations that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs were the result of "persecution" by Italian magistrates.

Flowers and handwritten tributes to Pantani, a national hero who won both the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia, covered the gates to the €55 (£37) a night residential hotel in Rimini on the Adriatic coast where he had been staying for five days.

Many poignantly declared love, grief and support for "The Pirate" (Il Pirata) as he was nicknamed because of the rakish hoop earrings he sported, his blonde goatee beard and the coloured bandanna he wore round his bald head instead of a helmet - a widely imitated style.

Pantani's mother Antonina and father Paolo, who returned today by ferry to Italy from Greece, where they had been on a caravan holiday for a week, were distraught.

"They have killed him, they have killed him," Pantani's mother repeatedly cried out on the ferry, according to passengers.

"Drugs and solitude were the secret keys to Pantani's life and death," said Corriere della Sera, which carried a front-page cartoon showing Pantani bent over his handlebars and pedalling furiously up to Heaven.

In his home town of Cesenatico, near Rimini, where bars and walls were plastered with posters honouring Pantani, one friend said: "The result of the post mortem doesn't really matter. What matters is that he was unhappy, and we all feel guilty."

Damiano Zoffoli, the mayor of Cesenatico, said "We all have put up our hands up ... We all let him down."

The death of the man who put cycling on the map in Italy has also sparked a debate on sport and drugs.

Raffale Guariniello, the Turin prosecutor in charge of a national commission investigating doping in sport, said: "I am very sorry for poor Pantani and for his relatives.

"But I'm also worried about the hundreds of other professional athletes to whom this could happen at any time, and about the thousands of youngsters who hero worshipped Pantani and wanted to be champions like him."

Reports said that Pantani, who was 20 kg (44lb) overweight, had gone to a clinic in northern Italy last summer to be treated for depression, but had checked himself out after only five days.

His parents and a local priest had then tried to persuade him to go to "a clinic in London famous for treating addiction", but instead he had gone to Cuba.

Pantani became a recluse after he failed a blood test in June 1999, when he was just hours from clinching victory again in the Giro d'Italia, which had been diverted to pass through Cesenatico in his honour.

He made a brief comeback four years ago, but never recovered from the "humiliation" of the drugs test, and "burnt with a sense of injustice", friends said.

He had "gone downhill", they said, spending wild nights at nightclubs and driving fast cars, one of which he smashed - along with several parked cars - after driving the wrong way up a one way street.

"He never got over being disqualified," said Davide Cassani, a fellow cyclist. "He told me he would never cycle again. I thought he was exaggerating, but it was the truth. He was right; he was a kind of scapegoat."

Last year Pantani came 14th in the Giro d'Italia and was excluded from the centenary Tour de France. To add to his sense of personal humiliation he was often mocked for his "elephantine" ears, on which he last year had surgery, appearing in public with his ears bandaged.

Diego Maradona, the former Naples and Argentina football star, who is in Italy and had met Pantani in Cuba, said that he had been through drugs "troubles" of his own and was "very sad. All of us are to blame for what happened."

He noted that in a football-mad nation, Pantani had given cycling a high profile, just as Alberto Tomba had done for skiing and Valentino Rossi for motorcycling.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa, said that the Church was also in mourning, adding: "Athletes are often much more fragile than we imagine."

[CaddyDaddy77]

I don't know a lot about cycling but have followed the tour and the Giro for the past several years after having roomies who were professional riders. Always admired "the little madman" in the climbs, he was amazing to watch, defiant, and intense.

[Viva]

Pantani autopsy shows heart attack and cerebral edema

Officials say exact cause still to be determined
By VeloNews Interactive
Copyright AFP2004
This report filed February 16, 2004

Pantani relatives arrive at the mortuary of Rimini's hospital on Monday. Marco Pantani died of a heart attack and showed signs of cerebral edema and lung damage, according to initial reports from an autopsy carried out in Italy on Monday.

Officials conducting the autopsy said it may be up to 60 days before they know the exact cause of death for the man who won both the Giro d' Italia and Tour de France in 1998.

"We can't rule out any cause of death," said Professor Giuseppe Fortuni after the autopsy. "Today's autopsy is only the first in a long series of tests. It will be a few weeks before we know the exact cause of death."

Pantani, a former winner of the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia, both in 1998, was found dead at 34 on Saturday in a hotel room in the Adriatic coastal resort of Rimini.

"We will make very precise exams in the laboratory in addition to those of the clinical type," Fortuni said. "We will then have microscopic exams and consider all hypotheses excluding none of them. We are just at the first phase."

Fortuni said Pantani had a cerebral edema, or an excess of water on the brain, and his lungs were congested.

[Tippster]

From Today's Reuters wire: (By Stephen Farrand)


RIMINI, Italy (Reuters) - The grief-stricken mother of Italian cycling great Marco Pantani blamed anti-doping investigations Tuesday for driving her son to his death.

An initial autopsy Monday revealed Pantani, a former Tour de France winner, died from accumulated fluid in the brain and lungs. The 34-year-old had been at the center of a series of legal probes into doping.

"They murdered him," Tonina Pantani was quoted as saying in La Gazzetta dello Sport ahead of a church ceremony honoring the cyclist in his hometown of Cesenatico.

The body of Pantani will be dressed in a dark blue suit and a trademark black bandana, which earned him the nickname "The Pirate," news agency ANSA said, citing hospital sources.

At the family's request, the coffin lid will be kept closed and visitors to the church will be limited. Pantani's body was discovered in a Rimini hotel room Saturday night.

Pantani was one of Italy's most popular sportsmen until the 1999 Giro d'Italia when he was thrown out of the race for failing a test for haematocrit - an indicator, though not proof, of the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Monday's autopsy showed he died from fluids in the brain and lungs but failed to explain the cause of death.

The pathologist in charge of the autopsy excluded violence as a cause of death. He said his investigation would take weeks to complete and there were no initial signs that a cocktail of drugs was to blame.

PANTANI PERSECUTED

Pantani's ex-manager at the Mercatone Uno team said the rider, who won the Tour and Giro d'Italia in 1998, had been persecuted by magistrates.

"Behind his mother's grief there are all the torments of the last few years: an inhuman calvary, I can't describe it," Beppe Martinelli told journalists. "The persecution lasted from 1999."

From that moment on Pantani was a marked man, family and friends say, as Italian magistrates brought a series of civil actions against him for sporting fraud.

The trial relating to his 1999 Giro positive test was resolved last October when a court threw out the earlier guilty verdict because his offence was not a civil crime at the time.

Pantani was also investigated by a Turin magistrate over high haemocrit levels during the Milan to Turin race of 1995.

Had he lived the cyclist would have faced a third trial, this time for doping and sporting fraud at the 2001 Giro d'Italia when a syringe of insulin was found in his hotel room.

The doctor who persuaded Pantani to book into a clinic for the treatment of depression and drug addiction last year said he was dismayed by the intrusive behavior of the press.

"You can't judge a person by a single mistake. Every one of us is the sum of many mistakes," Giuseppe Greco was quoted as saying in La Gazzetta. Dozens of Pantani's fans have flocked to the Rimini hospital where the cyclist's body is being held before being transferred to Cesenatico near the Adriatic coast.

Up to 40,000 people were expected to head to the small town for his funeral Wednesday.