Daniel Cann

Published 2006 by Phoenix

There is a quote that aptly describes the life of cycling superstar Marco Pantani ‘What is it to gain the world, but lose your soul?’ For this hero worshipped shy Italian sportsman has a cautionary and tragic story. Author Matt Rendell is amply qualified to tell it.

The book is a passionate and exhaustively researched work. Rendell is unquestionably a bona fide fan anxious to uncover the truth behind why one of Italy’s most renowned sons was found dead in a cheap hotel at a tragically young age.

Rendell covers Pantani’s cycling career in exhaustive detail. He describes key events and moments in the many titanic struggles that occurred during the diminutive but determined cyclists life. It is here the reader gets an appreciation of Pantani’s quiet but deeply competitive nature. Rendell explains how Pantani’s style is so unique when compared to his contemporaries. He was a renowned mountain cyclist and was known for his almost reckless disregard for his own safety in pursuit of victory and glory.

In 1998 he won the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France, an amazing and almost unheard of feat. As a consequence he become a huge star in his home country and respected across the cycling world. But it could not last. Rendell explains that around the time of his greatest triumph, Pantani’s life began to unravel.

The book explains how Pantani became addicted to cocaine in 1999 and also that as early as 1993 he had been using the banned drug r-EPO in his cycling events. The book goes into great detail on this subject. While the allegations for doping in cycling is important, particularly in the case of someone as high profile as Pantani, I felt that Rendell spent too much time on this and in the end I was overwhelmed to the point of losing interest as page after page provided more damning evidence. At one point I felt like yelling ‘I get it! He used r-EPO!’ but there were still more pages devoted to this subject.

For the most part this is a thrilling and deeply moving account of how society hero worships our sports stars and how easy it is for them to fall. I cannot begin to imagine the pressures that every athlete must face in pursuit of being the best and then to stay on top. We learn Pantani had many inner demons and the problems he faced in later life were implanted long before he became a national idol.

The circumstances that led to his death are well looked into and Rendell does a thorough investigation and as honest an account as he can. The event is still raw in the minds of the friends and family that he interviews. There is a lot of powerful stuff to mull over here.

Where the book loses its audience a little is when Rendell tries to inform the reader. We get lots of background on the socioeconomic situation of Italy in the 1970s and 80s and too much background detail. I can understand this is to put things in context but I felt that Rendell dwelled too long on this and I would have preferred it if he just told the straight story of Pantani: Cyclist. That aside this is a fascinating account of a tarnished hero.