Marco Pantani wasn't murdered, insists magistrate as family ask for case to be transferred

A magistrate in Italy says that Marco Pantani’s death on Valentine’s Day 2004 was due to an overdose with no-one else involved, and has recommended that an inquest in Rimini into the events leading up to it be closed.

The 1998 Tour de France and Giro d’Italia champion’s family, who insist he was forced to ingest a lethal dose of cocaine by persons unknown, are now trying to have the case moved to Bologna, reports La Gazzetta dello Sport.

According to the cyclist's family, because Rimini was where Pantani died, aged 34, any inquest held there will be prejudiced since that is where the original investigation took place.

– Review – Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist

Paolo Giovagnoli, chief magistrate in the town in Emilia-Romagna where Pantani died in a hotel room 11 years ago, disagrees, and says that the evidence shows there is no point continuing with the inquest.

But the Gazzetta reports that the family’s lawyer, Antonio De Rensis, will shortly present his own argument and also move that the case be handled in the region’s capital, Bologna.

The family’s assertion that Pantani was murdered is based on expert testimony from forensic pathologist, Professor Francesco Avato.

In contrast, analysis in 2004 of the same evidence by another pathologist, Professor Franco Tagliaro, established the cause of death as a being due to an overdose – deliberate or otherwise – of anti-depressants and cocaine.

In the current inquest, the chief magistrate has also noted that Pantani was locked in his room, according to testimony from the hotel concierge, and that no-one else could have been there at the time he died.

However, Pantani’s family insist that the magistrate’s recommendation to close the case does not take account of new evidence that has come to light in the decade since his death and have called the inquest “weak and one-way.”

Accordingly, they are asking the judge who is in overall charge of it to reject Giovagnoli’s findings, and move the case to a location where they believe there will be more chance of achieving what they see as justice.