Three doctors and a UCI official who examined Marco Pantani’s anti-doping test in the 1999 Giro d’Italia will be heard in court in the coming weeks as part of a case that involves Mafia gangs fixing sport.

Pantani was thrown out of the Giro that year while wearing the Maglia Rosa due to having a high haematocrit level.

The medics reject claims of foul play and told La Provinca newspaper in Como, “We did everything according to the rules.”

Forli’s public prosecutor, Sergio Sottani, opened the case this summer to see if Pantani was wrongfully removed from the race and he has called in several people to help him, such as career criminal Renato Vallanzasca, who says a fellow prisoner warned him against betting on Pantani, saying “Anyway, that bald-headed rider won’t make it to Milan.”

Pantani was comfortably in the lead with just two days to go but UCI official Antonio Coccioni headed a team of medics who carried out drug tests for Pantani and discovered he had a haematocrit of 51.9%, 1.9% over the limit and he had to take an automatic two week suspension. Doctors from the Sant’Anna Hospital in Como – Eugenio Sala, Michelarcangelo Partenope and Mario Spinelli – performed the haematocrit test. Spinelli has since retired, but Sala and Partenope continue to work at Sant’Anna.

“The [testing] machine used was the one required by the UCI,” Sala and Partenope told La Provinca. “We took the results to the sports director, Giuseppe Martinielli, and the team’s doctor, Roberto Rempi… The reading was above the limit and meant that the cyclist had to stop."

“On the same afternoon, the police seized our equipment. We were under investigation for aggravated fraud, but then an expert opinion confirmed the validity and fairness of our work.”

“We entered Pantani’s room that morning, withdrew 2.7cc of blood and put it in a bag that was used to carry samples, as the rules required,” they said.

“We’ve worked at the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, the World Championships. In 1999, our team already tested Pantani at the start in Agrigento and then a second time midway through the Giro.”

Pantani did return to achieve success; taking two stages in the 2000 Tour de France but his career and life were on a downward spiral and he died of a cocaine overdose on Valentines’ Day in 2004.