Marco Pantani - Death

Death

During the early evening of 14 February 2004 Pantani was found dead at a hotel in Rimini, Italy. An autopsy revealed he had a cerebral edema and heart failure, and a coroner's inquest revealed acute cocaine poisoning. Pantani spent the last days of his life isolated from his friends and family and barricaded himself inside his hotel room. Pantani's ex-girlfriend Christina Jonsson, in an April 2004 interview to Swiss news magazine L'Hebdo, indicated that following his expulsion from the 1999 Giro d'Italia Pantani had confessed to her he had started using cocaine. In 2008 Fabio Carlino was convicted of supplying Pantani with a dose of ultra-pure cocaine that caused his death. The conviction was overturned in 2011 by the Court of Cassation after the acting Prosecutor expressed doubts regarding the verdict, while stating that he “had the impression that the exaggerated media publicity surrounding Mr. Pantani's death led the judges to an excessive attribution of responsibility”.

Pantani was buried in his hometown, Cesenatico. Twenty thousand mourners were at his funeral, attended by Franco Ballerini, Alberto Tomba, Azeglio Vicini, Mario Cipollini and Diego Maradona among others. During the funeral, his manager Manuela Ronchi read notes that Pantani had written in his passport during a trip to Cuba:

I always thought he was more of an artist than an athlete – an extravagant figure, a Salvador Dalí. That's why people were so fond of him.

Miguel Indurain, five-times Tour de France winner, praised Pantani by saying: "He got people hooked on the sport. There may be riders who have achieved more than him, but they never succeeded in drawing in the fans like he did."