Video: Doped or framed? The story of Marco Pantani and the 1999 Giro d'Italia
On the morning of 5 June 1999, a UCI doctor knocked on Marco Pantani's hotel room door in Madonna di Campiglio. Pantani was wearing the pink jersey. He was leading the Giro d'Italia by more than five minutes with two days of racing left. Two hours later, he was on his way home.
He never tested positive for any banned substance. What he failed was a health check. A blood test for one number. A number that, twenty-seven years later, is still the subject of a criminal investigation in Italy. This is the story of the 1999 Giro d'Italia, the morning that ended Marco Pantani's career, and the open question that Italian prosecutors, the Antimafia Commission and journalists have spent two decades trying to answer.
Was Pantani thrown out because he was doping? Or because the Camorra needed him to lose?
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