book reviews

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the death of marco pantani. a biography by matt rendell orion books 324pp illus hardback

this book should have been titled the death of marco pantani. a character assassination. and i mean that as a compliment. the opening chapters, as in several other pantani books, lead with marco's early career both as an amateur and professional, pointing out how adept he was at cycling quickly when the road went up.

it is mentioned even today how the so called 'pure climbers' are able to take minutes out of 'ordinary' professional cyclists in the mountains due to continual accelerations which eventually break the elastic. there are many moments evidenced in matt rendell's book where this applies to pantani, the most memorable being at les deux alpes during the 1998 tour de france where pantaini took more than nine minutes out of an ailing jan ullrich and went on to do the double of winning the giro d'italia and tour in the same year. an achievement in itself, but doubly so for a 'pure climber'.

as many of you will know, the following year, in the giro of 1999, marco was leading by over five minutes with only two stages till the finish, when he was disqualified from the race at madonna di campiglio for having a haematocrit (red blood cell count) above the uci 50 percent limit. the haematocrit test is reckoned to show the probability of epo abuse (artificially boosting the blood count) though testing above the 50 percent limit led to disqualification on 'health' grounds since the test could not conclusively prove epo abuse.

marco's career took a nosedive after madonna di campiglio and he never regained the cycling skills he had shown up to this point. he died on valentines day in 2004.

and so goes the content of this book, and manuela ronchi's and to a lesser extent, john wilcockson's. so why would we buy matt rendell's book when we already know the butler did it? well, this one is little short of brilliant. if you're looking for a book that clears marco's name, proves that the outcome of madonna di campiglio (which we'll just call mdc, from now on) was the result of a witch hunt, and that marco was the beautiful climber that we'd all like to remember him as, then this is entirely the wrong book.

matt rendell must have been a forensic detective in a previous life, because while his research for the chapters up to mdc is particularly impressive, his account of the years of desperation leading to marco's eventual death is breathtaking.

marco turned to cocaine, certainly after mdc but possibly before, and it was this that eventually killed him. in both rendells' and ronchi's books, pantani is depicted as the delicate and mentally fragile man that he undoubtedly was, and the level of persecution meted out by the italian judiciary, while not unfounded, does seem to have been somewhat heavily weighted against marco while others were dealt with more leniently, or not at all.

however, the major revelation to come from rendell's investigations (and he has more than enough documented evidence to convince this pantani fan) is that 'there is incontrovertible evidence that marco's entire career was based on r-epo abuse' and as someone who has desperately wanted to find that mdc was the result of a conspiracy - why would any cyclist with only two stages to complete and a five minute lead over second place be stupid enough to dope? - this was a very hard book to read. matt rendell is to be congratulated on the tenacity of his investigations and for producing such a readable and absorbing account. it doesn't have a happy ending - any book about the death of anyone is bound to include some harrowing scenes - but perhaps the worst part is that maybe it doesn't have an ending at all. even with all the drugs testing, both in and out of competition, that continues in present day professional cycling, substance abuse still goes on (roberto heras and tyler hamilton spring to mind) and while matt rendell casts no aspersions, i for one don't believe that it is confined to professional cycling.

i have a poster on the wall behind my desk of marco pantani on a yellow and celeste bianchi and a smaller one with the legend 'grazzi ragazzi' and they will stay there still. because marco at his peak was a joy to behold and those memories will always remain. however, after reading 'the death of marco pantani' i no longer have any delusions about how marco reached the highs and lows in his life and in his career.

the definitive word on the life of marco pantani

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