Marco Pantani's mother: "I'll keep searching for the truth"

The mother of Marco Pantani insists that she will not stop until she finds out the truth about her son’s death in a Rimini hotel on Valentine’s Day 2004. Her comments come as a murder inquiry continues into the death of the man who in 1998 became the last rider to complete the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France double.

Tonina Pantani was speaking at the Overtime Festival in Macerata about her book In Nome di Marco – which translates in English as In the Name of Marco – together with the journalist Francesco Ceniti, who worked with her on the project.

“I won’t stop,” she said. “I’ll keep searching for the truth, and I’m not doing it for my son – I’m doing it for all the young people who identify themselves with the values of cycling,” reports Marche regional newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino.

“For too long,” she added, “Marco has been presented on TV as ‘Italy’s biggest doper.’ He wasn’t at peace with himself. He was robbed.”

Presumably referring to when, as a result of a haematocrit count above the UCI’s permitted level of 50 per cent, he was thrown off the Giro d’Italia at Madonna di Campiglio in 1999 when poised to win the race, she said: “I’ve personally researched the tests he underwent and it’s clear that the [levels of] platelets had risen that morning, because in the afternoon they were down again.

“My son spent four years and 1.5 million euro to try and understand who framed him,” she went on. “He didn’t manage it before they did away with him.”

Ceniti recalled journalist Gianni Mura’s description of Pantani as being like an ermine – “an animal that has pure white fur. He [Pantani] instead of letting himself be seen with a stain against him, preferred to die. Because for Marco, giving up racing a bike was the same as dying.”

Meanwhile, an inquiry into the cyclist’s death continues. Officially, Pantani died of acute cocaine poisoning, but an investigation that opened in August is pursuing the theory that he may have been killed.