Sport's Strangest Crimes: Pantani: Death of a Pirate

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Sport's Strangest Crimes: Marco Pantani: Death of a Pirate: 4. Icarus Falls

Marco Pantani: Death of a Pirate

4. Icarus Falls

BBC Radio 5 Live - Sport's Strangest Crimes, Marco Pantani: Death of a Pirate, 4. Icarus Falls

The 1999 Giro sees Marco start the race a superstar, but finish a disgrace.

Marco starts the 1999 Giro D’Italia as a superstar. But a late-stage disqualification means he finishes in disgrace. Humiliated, Marco and his allies are quick to cry conspiracy.

It’s 1999, and Marco Pantani is riding high after his Tour de France victory - both the bad boy of cycling, and the saviour of the sport. The 1999 Giro D’Italia seems to be made for him, and he leads the race by over 20 minutes - until a late-stage disqualification stops the pirate in his bike tracks.

With the other riders overjoyed, rumours about criminal betting, conspiracies - and even the mafia - abound, but the pirate refuses to go down without a fight.

As Pantani flies too close to the sun, who might be watching from the shadows?

New episodes released Thursday. If you’re in the UK, listen to the full series of Sport’s Strangest Crimes - first on BBC Sounds - bbc.in/3PbXQxv

Narrated by Hugh Dennis, with the voice of Iain Ferrier

Sound design: Rich Evans
Additional production: Lorenzo Bodrero, Matt Kenyon and Ed Morrish

Writer and producer: Katie Sayer
Executive producer: Jon Holmes

Sport's Strangest Crimes: Marco Pantani: Death of a Pirate

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Cycling and organised crime collide when a champion cyclist is mysteriously found dead.

When Italy's greatest cyclist is mysteriously found dead, sensational claims of mafia involvement see the world of cycling collide with the murky underworld of organised crime.

When Italy's greatest cyclist is mysteriously found dead, sensational allegations of mafia involvement see the world of cycling collide, headfirst, with the murky underworld of organised crime.

Over the course of this podcast, we'll travel from the mountains of rural Italy, to the shady commercial underbelly of a sport on the rise, as - two decades on - the police, historians and our cycling-obsessed host Hugh Dennis try to answer once and for all what really happened to Marco Pantani.

With allegations of doping, race-fixing, gambling, and corruption, 90s cycling provides the backdrop for one of the most dramatic questions in sport - and criminal - history... would the mafia really kill a cyclist?

Welcome to Marco Pantani: Death of a Pirate.

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