“Others before us in the room where he died” –

Two dates marked Marco Pantani’s descent into the abyss: that of his exclusion from the Giro d’Italia with the famous hematocrit test, on 5 June 1999, and that of his death from an overdose of cocaine and drugs in Rimini, on 14 February 2004. After numerous investigations and related stops, today the Trento Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the fate of the cycling champion from Cesenatico following the work of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the alleged plot against the Pirate in ’99, when his by now a certain victory in the Giro would have blown up the clandestine betting shop. An affair which the crime boss Renato Vallanzasca alluded to at the time and which has cyclically appeared in the investigations into Pantani. And on which today the Trento magistrates are acquiring documents from the Forlì prosecutor’s office.

“Mafia-style criminal association aimed at clandestine betting and linked to the death of the cyclist”, the hypothesis of a crime so far without suspects which is based on the suspicion of “manipulation” of Pantani’s blood samples by the Camorra. So far, ten people informed of the facts have been interviewed by the prosecutor’s office to reconstruct the methods of sampling and understand why the test tube was not assigned a progressive and anonymous number but 11440, placed in the presence of several people. “From the papers, if you read them carefully, elements emerge that that check was not carried out according to the law with conduct that could have interfered with the blood sample – commented the lawyer Fiorenzo Alessi who represents the Pirate’s mother, Tonina Belletti, while his son Alberto follows Ferdinando Pantani -. Now there is good joint work with the judiciary. The circumstances are the substance of a criminal proceeding”.

Evidence also emerges from the papers relating to Pantani’s death, five years later. “They gave us instructions so that my colleague and I waited outside”, we read in the summary information, seen by LaPresse, provided by two forensic police officers as part of the investigation into “mafia-style criminal association aimed at clandestine betting and connected upon the cyclist’s death”. “First others entered the room where Marco Pantani died. This seemed strange to me since, in my opinion, the forensic operators, appropriately equipped with shoes, gloves and overalls, should enter the scene of the crime being investigated first”, he states an agent.

On the evening of February 14, 2004, in room D5 of the ‘Le Rose’ residence in Rimini, now demolished, the champion’s body was found lifeless. The parliamentary anti-mafia commission found “investigative gaps” in the “findings relating to the death of the sportsman Marco Pantani and any elements connected to organized crime which led to his disqualification in 1999”. Therefore “the choice, following the hasty conclusion of the investigations, not to take fingerprints in the place where the body was discovered appears unacceptable, completely inexplicable in consideration of the copious presence of blood, visible from the numerous photographs of the scientific police, of which membership should have been verified”, the Anti-Mafia Commission concluded.