Marco Pantani - Alleged Drug Use

Alleged Drug Use

After being disqualified at the 1999 Giro d'Italia for an hematocrit reading of 52-percent, above the 50-percent upper limit set by UCI, Pantani faced persistent allegations of doping through the rest of his career.

The trial for the 1999 Giro d'Italia irregular blood values began in April 2003 and Pantani was eventually acquitted because doping was not considered a crime by the law at that time. In early June of 1999, a few days after Pantani was expelled from the 1999 Giro d'Italia, a court condemned the town of Turin to compensate him for an accident in the 1995 edition of the Milano-Torino, which forced Pantani to undergo several surgeries and a long recovery to get back on his bike. A few days later, Italian prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello accused Pantani of a "sporting offence" after he discovered, by looking through trial and medical records, that Pantani's hematocrite after the accident was over 60 percent. Although the results didn't surface until 1999, in early 1997 UCI had decided to implement blood testing imposing a 50-percent upper limit for hematocrit. A rider with a value above 50-percent was given a compulsory two-week suspension. The test was designated as a "health test" although it was on suspicion that the athlete was using the banned blood-boosting drug, EPO. During the proceeding, investigators tried to find a reason of Pantani's high hematocrite values, including an hematocrit value of 57.6% recorded on 1 May 1995, at an hospital after he had an accident while training, in which the doctor pointed out the presence of abnormal hematological values. Upon Guariniello's request to see Pantani's medical record after his accident at the 1997 Giro d'Italia, it was revealed that the blood test results had disappeared from the folder at the hospital and the police did not rule out "intentional removal". Pantani was eventually indicted on a so-called “fraud in sport” but his lawyers argued that Pantani's hematocrit may have been elevated by a combination of training at high altitude in September, suffering from dehydration during the race, trauma of his accident and an margin of error for the sampling method. The original case started in Turin but was moved to Forlì upon Pantani's lawyers requests. Although he initially received a three month suspended sentence, Pantani's lawyers appealed and the case was dismissed in late 2001 because the law itself had only been passed in 1999.

In 1999 the Italian newspaper la Repubblica published information that linked Marco Pantani to an investigation on the use of performance-enhancing substances in Italian sports. According to the information released by the newspaper, Francesco Conconi administered EPO to Italian athletes from 1993 to 1998, including Pantani and other cyclists of Carrera. It was revealed that Pantani's name appeared on a file marked "Dblab", seized from Conconi's Biomedical Research Institute at Ferrara, which detailed athlete's hematocrit levels between 1993 and 1995. In 1994 his haematocrit values fluctuated from 40.7% on 16 March, early in the season, to 54.55% on 23 May, during the first stages of the Giro d'Italia. His values reached 58% on 8 June, after winning two stages of the race, and were 57.4% on 27 July, after the Tour de France. In March 1995 his hematocrit values had dropped to 45% but they reached 56% in July during the Tour de France, where he won two stages, and over 60% in October, after the accident in the Milano-Torino. In 2004 Conconi and his two assistants were acquitted by judge Franca Oliva because the crimes were not deemed illegal at the time although they were deemed "morally guilty" of promoting doping.

During the 2001 Giro d'Italia, a syringe containing traces of insulin was found in Pantani's room. Pantani claimed that the insulin had been planted and that he did not stay in the room that night. In 2002 he was banned for eight months by the Italian Cycling Federation but he later won an appeal due to an absence of proof.

In 2006, two years after his death, Pantani was linked to the Operación Puerto doping case. According to documentation released by Spanish radio network Cadena SER, Pantani was allegedly given the code name "PTNI" by Eufemiano Fuentes, with a detailed program in 2003, his last season, including EPO, growth hormone, Insulin, Levothroid and IGF-1. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera indicated that he was administered over 40,000 units of EPO, seven doses of growth hormone, thirty doses of anabolic steroids and four doses of hormones used to treat menopause. In 2006 Jesús Manzano, a Spanish professional road racing cyclist whose statements led the Guardia Civil to conduct the Operación Puerto investigation, disclosed in an interview with French television channel France 3 that Pantani was a client of Eufemiano Fuentes.

On the penultimate stage of 1998 Giro d'Italia, Pantani's teammate Riccardo Forconi was expelled from the race for an haematocrit value above 50 percent. Ivano Fanini, the manager of Amore & Vita-Giubileo 2000-Beretta, suggested during the early stages of 1999 Giro d'Italia that Pantani and Forconi had exchanged their blood samples in order to avoid Pantani's disqualification. According to Fanini, Forconi's haematocrit value the previous day was only 47 percent. In 2008 Fanini further claimed that Forconi had received a house for the exchange but Forconi refused these claims.

Matt Rendell's biography of Pantani suggests Pantani used recombinant erythropoietin (rEPO) throughout his professional career. It alleges that seasonal hematocrit levels from several sources showed variations which exceeded those possible naturally, and that Pantani's great victories were probably won thanks to blood hematocrit levels which could have been up to 60%.