The Sunday Times - Sport
February 15, 2004
Cycling: Dead at 34
DAVID WALSH
Marco Pantani was first kicked out of cycling in 1999, but he had pushed the self-destruct button long before being banned
The news agencies reported that the 1998 Tour de France winner Marco Pantani was found dead at his apartment in Rimini last evening, and an Italian friend said he was in a hotel and was discovered dead by the manager. What is certain is the sadness at Pantani’s premature death and the suspicion that it was utterly avoidable. Modern sport, in all its hypocrisy, has claimed another victim.
Italian police said the cause was as yet unknown, but that he had not died a violent death. A police team was conducting inquiries at the scene and medical tests were due to be carried out.
In Italy last night they showed clips of Pantani soaring away from his rivals in the Alps and Dolomites. They presented him as he desperately wished to be seen. And although they dared not say it, those victories came at a terrible price as Pantani paid for each one with a part of his life. He had been an unwell man for much of the last 10 years and while we await the official cause of his death, we already know where and when it started to go seriously wrong for Pantani.
He was a very talented bike rider, maybe the purest mountain climber since Lucian Van Impe or, before him, Charly Gaul. It was his bad luck to arrive on the professional cycling scene at around the same time as the dangerous blood-boosting drug, erythropoieitin. No matter how gifted, no rider could compete with those on EPO unless he, too, used the drug. When Pantani began, it wasn’t even banned.
But from the earliest days of his career, it was clear that he had a problem. He crashed during the 1995 Milan to Turin race and when taken to hospital, it was discovered he had an haematrocrit level of 60. The average level of male athletes is around 42 or 43 but Pantani’s blood was so rich in red cells, and consequently so thick, that the medical people treating him knew that something was amiss.
After a few days in hospital, his haematocrit level dropped to 16, an even more alarming situation than the abnormally high 60. But then a couple of doctors came from another town to visit Pantani and his haematrocrit level rose to 38. What was obvious back then was that the rider’s body was not always capable of producing its own red cells and that Pantani needed to be protected from himself.
But he had miles to ride and a Tour de France to win. What a travesty of a sporting event that 1998 Tour de France was. The police found drugs pretty much wherever they looked, five Spanish teams pulled out because they didn’t like the police presence and cycling’s No 1 team, Festina, was kicked out of the race because it was found with the biggest drugs cargo of all. And that was the race Marco Pantani won. He climbed the mountains at a speed that had never before been seen in the race and he took his place among the Tour’s champions.
Only recently a woman who worked with one of the teams in that race remarked that even in the midst of an overwhelming police presence, the cars bringing the drugs were still arriving at Pantani’s hotel. But what did anybody care as long as the man we called “The Pirate†continued to climb like an angel? The following year he was again dominant in the Tour of Italy but with two days to go his haematocrit level was 53 and he was banished from the race.
Cycling’s authorities say that an haematocrit level of 53 doesn’t prove a rider has used EPO but they knew about Pantani. Everybody did. Even that day, he showed up 15 minutes late for the drug test and they knew he had been using a saline drip to thin his blood and get his haematocrit down below the 50 threshold.
But everybody stayed quiet and waited for Pantani to come and animate the next mountain race. He was a fiercely aggressive rider in the mountains and loved by the tifosi. In cheering all the way to the summit, we hastened his descent.
There are a few good men and one of them, Professor Sandro Donati, tried to make the authorities see sense. Donati works for the Italian Olympic Committee (Coni) but has rarely had that body’s support and when Donati said Pantani should not be allowed to compete in Sydney he was overruled.
Donati had asked his medical commission to test all Italian athletes going to the Olympics; they found that Pantani’s body was not producing red cells at that time and that what the rider needed was medical help, not more competition. Pantani went to Sydney and the madness continued. His health further deteriorated but he clung onto the belief that he could again be the great climber.
Maybe it was the realisation that his health just wasn’t getting better that brought on depression last year, when he spent two months in a psychiatric hospital. Speaking from Rome last night, Sandro Donati expressed his sorrow at Pantani’s death and his disgust at those who contributed to it.
“This night,†he said, “there are some doctors in Italy who should not sleep easily. Journalists, too, played their part. They knew what he was doing and they urged him to go faster and faster. When he won, they said he was a legend, when he was very unhealthy. Marco Pantani could have been a legend by telling young people what he had done and how it had affected his life.â€
It would be easy to recall the majesty of Pantani in full flight, but it would another piece of hypocrisy. Better to remember that Pantani was destroyed by his ambition and by a sport with no will to police itself properly.
It is also worth remembering another great climber of this era, Jose Maria Jimenez. He was a Spaniard and they called him “Chabaâ€, an affectionate nickname for a man who thrilled the fans with his daring in the mountains.
Every other year, he would win the mountains jersey in the Tour of Spain and in 1998, the same year Pantani won the Tour de France, Chaba achieved his best placing by finishing third in the Vuelta.
Chaba Jimenez died two months ago, found dead in a psychiatric hospital. There was talk of cocaine but cycling people knew what it truly was. Another grim reminder of the carnage caused by a sport that has long been out of control.
