Marco Pantani - 20 years gone on 14th February 2024.
I got up Sunday morning 15-2-2004 and turned on Euronews about 8:01 am.
I missed the headlines and the sound was turned down. Pantani was the main story. I was perplexed. There was some archive footage and the exterior of a hotel at night.
Why is Marco the main story? Before I could turn the sound up they moved onto the next story.
Then I thought ''Pantani's dead''.
It was a terrible time. A series of riders died in just over a year inc. Jose Maria Jimenez - another great climber - in December 2003 in very similar circumstances:
Doping, narcotic addiction and serious mental health problems.
First I thought Marco must have had a heart attack but it was much worse.
For a few years it had been embarrassing watching Pantani riding along at the back of races with the whole Mercatone Uno team around him. ''Why doesn't he just fuck off and retire?''
At one stage Marco was in a clinic and the media showed up and he had to leave but there wasn't enough info for the public to realise how badly off he was.
Pantani was shy and when multiple doping cases hung over him being a loudmouth and defending himself was an automatic self defence mechanism.
I felt ashamed that I didn't see this coming.
I had been wishing he would go away for a few years and now he was dead.
So many people used Marco and then didn't really care about him.
When the owner of Mercatone Uno was told Marco was abusing cocaine he responded by asking would Pantani be able to ride the Giro?
When Frank Vandenbroucke ended up on the same awful path to destruction it happened more publicly
and I expected VBD to die for several years before he finally did.
Pantani left an estate worth over 30 million. His mother is still only in her early 70's and never even got close to dealing with the loss of her son.
I got up Sunday morning 15-2-2004 and turned on Euronews about 8:01 am.
I missed the headlines and the sound was turned down. Pantani was the main story. I was perplexed. There was some archive footage and the exterior of a hotel at night.
Why is Marco the main story? Before I could turn the sound up they moved onto the next story.
Then I thought ''Pantani's dead''.
It was a terrible time. A series of riders died in just over a year inc. Jose Maria Jimenez - another great climber - in December 2003 in very similar circumstances:
Doping, narcotic addiction and serious mental health problems.
First I thought Marco must have had a heart attack but it was much worse.
For a few years it had been embarrassing watching Pantani riding along at the back of races with the whole Mercatone Uno team around him. ''Why doesn't he just fuck off and retire?''
At one stage Marco was in a clinic and the media showed up and he had to leave but there wasn't enough info for the public to realise how badly off he was.
Pantani was shy and when multiple doping cases hung over him being a loudmouth and defending himself was an automatic self defence mechanism.
I felt ashamed that I didn't see this coming.
I had been wishing he would go away for a few years and now he was dead.
So many people used Marco and then didn't really care about him.
When the owner of Mercatone Uno was told Marco was abusing cocaine he responded by asking would Pantani be able to ride the Giro?
When Frank Vandenbroucke ended up on the same awful path to destruction it happened more publicly
and I expected VBD to die for several years before he finally did.
Pantani left an estate worth over 30 million. His mother is still only in her early 70's and never even got close to dealing with the loss of her son.
