THE PANTANI AFFAIR

The Pantani Affair winds its way through a period of five years in the life of the champion of Romagna, from and including the 5th of June 1999 until the 14th February 2004, the date of his death.
On Saint Valentine’s Day of 2004, when it happened, in a modest suite of a modest residence in Rimini, pale as the February sea that could be seen from the window, his death was hurriedly liquidated as an overdose of cocaine taken in absolute solitude.
5th June 1999. Following an anti-doping test in a hotel in Madonna di Campiglio, Marco Pantani was excluded from the Giro d’Italia that he had been leading triumphantly. The “Pirate” screamed conspiracy. Just twenty-four hours earlier he had the world at his feet. Now everyone was turning their back on him.
Fifteen years would pass before the Public Prosecutor gathered evidence of the involvement of organized crime behind the sabotage of his tests. Unfortunately, his life would end much sooner.
He was found on the evening of 14th February, five years later. Alone, lying on the floor, without a shirt. Around him there were signs of a furious struggle against everyone or someone. The investigation which was closed after only 55 days left only doubts and no certainties.
Marco Pantani’s life seems to have come straight out of a novel: from the sea of Cesenatico to triumph on the peak of the Galibier and then down again, breathless, until his death, on the beach of Rimini.
In his twelve years as a professional cyclist, the Pirate of Romagna achieved an honorary place in the history of sport and with the public, not only among cycling fans. Because Marco Pantani was a racer like those in the old black and white films, with his face marked by fatigue and with the eyes of a tiger.
The news does not tell the whole story about Marco Pantani. A story, that in the best Italian tradition, mixes drama with mystery, conspiracy with tragedy. His story is the rise and fall of a much-loved hero, a one way ticket, running from the world and from himself.
The Pantani Affair, although based on testimonies of Marco Pantani’s relatives and lawyers, and availing itself of the latest trial documents, does not want to be (just) an investigative film. The intention is to carry out an investigation that is also, and above all, intimate, about the personality and emotions of a man called Marco Pantani. A man who had been a legend. A legend that was destroyed. A victim who did not get justice.
Marco Pantani, was in fact at least three different people:
There was a Pantani for whom cycling was his whole life, and thanks to which he achieved all of his dreams. A young boy who started from his family’s piadina kiosk, who in a short time was climbing legendary mountains, and arriving at the peak of unimaginable popularity, breathing new oxygen into the media of international cycling.
There was a Pantani who transformed from a legend into a scapegoat and saw his fame fall into notoriety in the space of a few hours, due to the measurement of a haematocrit blood test that history would show had been tampered with. A man who, however, had to painfully face forces and dynamics above his means, and who ended up falling into the trap of cocaine: the “substance”, as he called it, which alleviated his depression but day by day weakened his sporty constitution and his moral lucidity.
Finally, there was the most forgotten Pantani of all. He was the sacrificial lamb of the media ritual, victim of a homicide. The man fleeing from life, who understood that, tragically, he would never again be able to get back on the saddle, and who had nothing to lose, not even his dignity nor his honour.
The Pantani Affair tells the story of these three souls. Three acts of one existence which are not however independent and separate, but, fused together in a continuous game of references.
The Pantani Affair winds its way through a period of five years in the life of the champion of Romagna, last five years.
His death was hurriedly liquidated as an overdose of cocaine taken in absolute solitude.
However, in reality, during those tragic days, the champion, by now destroyed, was not alone.
After five years of investigation we can say that Marco was killed.
It's time to tell this story