RIMINI, Italy, 18 February 2004 — Italian cyclist Marco Pantani died of a heart attack and was also found to have brain and lung damage, according to initial reports from an autopsy carried out here Monday.
“We can’t rule out any cause of death,” Professor Giuseppe Fortuni told reporters.
“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.”
Fortuni said Pantani had a cerebral oedema, or an excess of water on the brain, and his lungs were congested.
Pantani, a former winner of the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, both in 1998, was found dead aged 34 on Saturday in a hotel room in the Adriatic coastal resort of Rimini. The inconclusive autopsy results will fuel speculation already rife in the Italian media that he may have committed suicide with a drug overdose. Pantani last summer spent time in a clinic specializing in depression and drug addiction. Police said 10 packets of prescription sedatives were found in his room, some of which had been opened.
Italian press reports have said scribbled notes were found at his side when his half-naked body was discovered, in which he suggested he was addicted to cocaine and wanted to go to a detoxification clinic.
Another scribbled note said: “No-one has been able to understand me, not even in cycling, not even my family. I’ve ended up alone.” Newspapers expanded on the cocaine theory, saying Pantani had planned to go for treatment in a clinic in Bolivia run by his friend, Father Pierino Gelmini, who also runs a similar project in Italy. “He wanted to get away from the glare of publicity,” Gelmini told the Corriere della Sera.
“Pantani refused to go to a clinic here. In Italy it would have created a media circus and he didn’t want that. He was worried what the newspapers would say and he just wanted to be left in peace. Pantani’s funeral is expected to take place today at the San Giacomo church in his hometown of Cesenatico, about 30 kilometers from Rimini.
Pantani’s Mother Lashes Out
Over Doping Investigations
The grief-striken mother of Italian cycling great Marco Pantani blamed anti-doping investigations yesterday for driving her son to his death. An initial autopsy on 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.
