Marco Pantani, once Italy’s most celebrated cyclist, died alone on Valentine’s Day in a hotel called The Rose, just one month after his 34th birthday. It was a sad and shocking ending for this champion who had reached the highest levels of athletic achievement in 1998 when he won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in the same year. Pantani also twice defeated Lance Armstrong in mountaintop stages of the 2000 Tour de France. But when Pantani embraced the drug culture of professional cycling, he plummeted from the heights of stardom to the utter depths of depression.

Now, for the first time, the full story of Pantani’s sparkling career and terrible fall is told, including an intimate interview—never before published in English—with Pantani’s girlfriend , Christina Jonsson, on the Italian star’s tragic final days.

In Marco Pantani: The Legend of a Tragic Champion, editor John Wilcockson has compiled a memorable selection of contemporary articled, written by leading American and European sportswriters, along with the images of renowned sports photographer Graham Watson, to create a fitting tribute to one of cycling’s brightest—and most tumultuous—stars.
Softcover; 181 pages; 150mm x 230mm; Colour Photography; Wilcockson, John