It was February 14, 2004. On that night of San Valentino Marco Pantani was found dead in a room of the Le Rose residence in Rimini. Since then, inquiries have continued and the mystery of the death of one of the greatest Italian cyclists, the last capable of winning the 1998 Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in the same year, has not yet been put to an end.
What opens now is the third file on the case. AND an investigation into murder, against unknown persons, opened after sending the information from the parliamentary anti-mafia commission to the Rimini public prosecutor’s office, in 2019. The two previous investigations had the same outcome. Investigations of 2004 and 2014 concluded that the murder hypothesis is only a conjecture and that death resulted from “the assumption, certainly voluntary, of massive doses of cocaine and antidepressant drugs”. The decision was also confirmed in 2017 by the Supreme Court.
It was not a murder, the courts say, but Pantani’s family believes that there are still truths to tell about the death of the Pirate, officially died of a cocaine overdose. It was Marco’s family who delivered a 51-page memorial to the chief prosecutor of Rimini to restart the investigation. Tonina Belletti, Pantani’s mother, went to the Prosecutor’s Office together with the family’s new lawyer, Fiorenzo Alessi. It starts from the role of the pusher Fabio Miradossa, the one who supplied Pantani with cocaine. It was he who declared in 2019 that the cyclist from Romagna had been killed.
The Anti-Mafia Commission also dealt with the Pantani case starting from the words of the pusher and those of Renato Vallanzasca. The exponent of the Banda della Comasina reported that, in prison, members of organized crime close to the Camorra were talking about bets linked to Marco Pantani and the exclusion for hematocrit beyond the norm at the Giro d’Italia in 1999, in Madonna di Campiglio. Vallanzasca explained: “They told me to bet against Pantani because he wouldn’t have finished the Giro.” The minutes of these conversations, in addition to the memorial of the Pantani family, are the basis of the new investigation.
There was a single trial with three convictions, that of 2004. Fabio Carlino, former manager of discos, was sentenced to 4 years and six months, “for drug dealing and death as a consequence of the drug dealing”, then acquitted because the fact does not exist. Ciro Veneruso was sentenced to 3 years and 10 months, accused of having brought cocaine to Pantani. The pusher Fabio Miradossa has negotiated a sentence of 4 years and 10 months.
“I’m always fighting for whatever truth it is, not for illusions” said mom Tonina at the presentation of the latest film about her son. This he hopes to find with a new investigation.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:
– 15 years ago the farewell to Marco Pantani, “The effort and fun of racing with the Pirate”
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