The Death of Marco Pantani: A Biography by Matt Rendell

Author:Matt Rendell [Rendell, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781780225449
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

Crisis Management

(JUNE 1999–JANUARY 2000)

Marco’s blood-test result was an enigma. The Giro was already his: why would he dope himself? If he was doped, why wasn’t his blood diluted to produce a false result? It is clear that Marco was not supposed to win that day, and that doing so caused some discomfort even to members of his own team. It quickly emerged that a number of wealthy team sponsors had been seen expressing anger and frustration at Marco’s domination: had they hatched a plot to destroy Marco? What about the bookmakers, for whom Marco’s expulsion would surely unleash a windfall? Either way, even Marco’s team-mates had heard rumours the night before the test that he would be disqualified the following morning. The plot thesis spread like wildfire.

On 8 and 9 June Marco had the opportunity to give his own position, first in a television interview with an eminent Italian journalist, Gianni Minà, and then in a press conference held at Monte del Re. The interview with Minà was tortuous, for Marco could scarcely think, and what he could think he could scarcely express. ‘For me it’s a rather difficult, rather hard moment in which my thoughts are . . . are many, that’ – here, a stutter: ‘che, c-, c-, c-’ – ‘are going through my mind, my head in this . . . in this . . . in these last two or three days, so I think the house was perhaps the moment . . . where I could take refuge and look for explanations.’ The turmoil in his psyche can only have been worsened by the director’s decision to show the eyebrows-to-chin close-up camera image on a monitor positioned over Minà’s left shoulder. It left Marco talking towards a live shot of his own face.

Anger, frustration, shame are . . . are . . . are some sensations that, er . . . I have inside. The fact that . . . that I’d won a Giro d’Italia, er . . . I believe, in an impeccable manner, after so much work . . . To find yourself before a verdict of this type is certainly a cold shower and . . . Anyone finds themselves before a wall that’s falling in on you, something that strikes you in your . . . in your . . . morale . . . in your soul – certainly not an easy moment that . . . It isn’t the incident, the incident . . . It’s comparable to an accident, but . . . Morale . . . I believe that this time I’m starting from much lower down.

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