Biographer Matt Rendell says that Marco Pantani was not murdered and that he did die from a cocaine overdose on Valentines Day in 2004.

“People are going to be left with farcical version of the death of JFK or a bald, big-eared Marilyn Monroe story because they won’t bother to look at the facts, they’ll assume that there’s some truth to what’s being talked about,” the English journalist told Cycling Weekly. “There won’t be another end because Pantani was clearly not murdered.”

Pantani, the last man to do the Giro-Tour double in 1998, became addicted to cocaine after being thrown out of the Giro in 1999 just a few days from its end while wearing the Maglia Rosa due to a high haematocrit level.

Rendell wrote The Death of Marco Pantani in 2007 and the death of the great man is once again in the spotlight as two cases, in Rimini and Forli, investigating if he was murdered and if a Mafia gang had a hand in his disqualification from the Giro in 1999, have been reopened.

“La Gazzetta dello Sport [Italy's leading sports newspaper] ran comic strips to show the Rimini story. That’s really what it is, a comic story,” Rendell said.

“These are murderers with no names, no suspects, there’s no persuasive motive being mentioned.”

Pantani’s parents lawyer, Antonio De Rensis, tried o have the case reopened into his death in July after claiming that the police investigated the hotel room where Pantani died poorly and they didn’t even test the water bottle in the room, which De Rensis says some men who Pantani knew put lethal amounts of cocaine into and then forced the Italian star to drink.

“If you believe what is written, these are criminals that can drift through walls and windows because the windows were locked and the door was barricaded from the inside. Pantani would shut himself in the room, turn up the heating and sate himself with cocaine."

“The bottle of water? When De Rensis and Francesco Avato [medical expert for Pantini's family] looked at in the investigators’ crime scene film, they saw this bottle of water and said, ‘Where’s the bottle in the evidence?’ Pantani was not beaten over the head with the bottle. It was not a blunt instrument used for killing. The evidence from the medical staff, it was consistent, and showed no sign of a struggle and this was a case of cocaine overdose. There was cocaine on every surface.”

Rendell points to the fact that Pantani had already overdosed on cocaine four times in 2003: in Cesenatico, Saturnia and Miramare (all in Italy) and in Havana in Cuba. But many people in Italy still believe that the cyclist was murdered.

“When we are in love with someone, when you are passionate about someone like a sports star or a person close to you, it clouds your judgement,” Rendell said.

“In Italy, there’s a mistrust of the institutions. The sad thing in this case is that the Rimini and the Forlì investigations were exemplary pieces of police work, but they are now being made to look corrupt and rubbish.”