Pantani. Debunking the Murder Myth by Rossini Andrea

Author:Rossini, Andrea [Rossini, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: KTP
Published: 2014-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

After ten days of torment, Marco suddenly began to go out. He wanted to reach outside his own head, and get away from people who wanted to tell him what he should and should not do, and how he should and should not react. He wanted to distance himself from cycling and his torment. After so much sacrifice, he sought his night time companions. His escape soon took on a name that Pantani never liked to pronounce: cocaine.

One night, when Christina noticed him acting strangely, he confided in her.

- I’ve started to sniff cocaine.

It was a way of keeping his head under pressure, he said. Much later, she described her response to a Swiss news magazine. It was fear. “I couldn’t believe it. I was desperate because I’m afraid of drugs. In Italy, cocaine is still considered sophisticated. When Marco told me he was using it, it was his way of saying he wanted me to take it with him. If I loved him, I ought to do it for him, to prove it. He was alone and he was convinced that I was betraying him. That whole period was a nightmare.”

She loved him. They started to take drugs together. “If I had judged him, I would have lost him. So I thought: if I love him, I have to do it too.” She thought that she could reestablish communication with him. It was a terrible mistake. Marco would wait until Christina came back from work, then they would sniff cocaine together. Pantani, with the physique of a professional athlete and that exceptional heart, consumed astonishing quantities from the start. She tried not to go too far. His parents did not understand what was going on in the other wing of the house. All they knew was that, to speak to their son, they had to go through Christina. When the truth emerged, they misinterpreted Christina’s complicity in Marco’s drug use as responsibility for it. She was a foreigner, a night club dancer. They often argued. After three months of cocaine and desperation, Christina left for the first time. Her experience with drugs ended there, but not her life with Pantani: over subsequent years, their relationship occasionally rekindled, with Christina hoping each time that she might be able to help him. They separated, got back together, then separated again. Life with Marco had become difficult, as life with substance addicts is. Worse, Christina faced the wall that Pantani’s family, staff and sponsors had raised around him. The final goodbye came when Christina contacted Pantani again in April 2003. She wanted to ask his advice about buying a property, and obtaining a mortgage.

- I’m much better now. I told you I’d come back. We could try again…

They met up a couple of times. Thoughts of getting back together hung in the air, but Christina was on a different path. She had career as a creative artist; she would soon graduate from the Academy of Fine Art in Ravenna. She graduated with distinction a week after Pantani’s death.

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