“I reviewed the whole story.
I was, and I remain, convinced that the whole truth about Marco's death has not yet been revealed, about what happened at the hotel in the hours and days leading up to his death ”.
The search for truth of Tonina Pantani, the mother of the Italian cycling champion who died in 2004, has just experienced a major new episode this Tuesday.
According to several transalpine media, the prosecution of Rimini, a city on the Adriatic coast where Marco Pantani was found dead on February 14, 2004 in a hotel room, has chosen to reopen the investigation into his death.
His family has always disputed the official thesis of the overdose and suspected homicide.
Lawyer Fiorenzo Alessi sent the prosecution a 51-page document containing new statements which, according to him, could upset the official thesis of suicide by overdose of cocaine and antidepressants.
His dealer persuaded of the assassination
At the heart of this argument: the words of Fabio Miradossa, the man condemned for having sold the fatal dose to the cyclist and who categorically affirmed in 2019 that the champion had been assassinated.
"I am convinced that Marco Pantani was killed, I met him 5 or 6 months before his death and he certainly did not seem like a person who wanted to stop living."
What if he had been tricked into ingesting those doses of drugs?
Here is in essence the main hypothesis of the Pantani family.
After doing the Tour-Giro double in 1998, the climber was excluded in 1999 from the Tour of Italy for non-compliant blood values.
The 34-year-old Pantani had never really recovered from this exclusion.
This is the third investigation opened around this death.
The last investigation ended with a dismissal in 2016: the hypothesis of a murder of the great cyclist from Romagna was then described as "fanciful and unfounded".
In 2017, the Supreme Court then dismissed a last resort from Pantani's family, saying he had not been murdered.
Investigators are now interested in individuals hitherto "unknown" in the case.
