Italian cyclist Marco Pantani died of a heart attack and was also found to have brain and lung damage, according to initial reports from an autopsy carried out here on Monday.
”We can’t rule out any cause of death,” Professor Giuseppe Fortuni told reporters.
”Today’s autopsy is only the first in a long series of tests. It will be a few weeks before we know the exact cause of death.”
Fortuni said Pantani had a cerebral oedema, or an excess of water on the brain, and his lungs were congested.
Pantani, a former winner of the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, both in 1998, was found dead aged 34 on Saturday in a hotel room in the Adriatic coastal resort of Rimini.
The inconclusive autopsy results will fuel speculation already rife in the Italian media that he may have committed suicide with a drug overdose. Pantani last summer spent time in a clinic specialising in depression and drug addiction.
Police said 10 packets of prescription sedatives were found in his room, some of which had been opened.
Italian press reports have said scribbled notes were found at his side when his half-naked body was discovered, in which he suggested he was addicted to cocaine and wanted to go to a detoxification clinic.
Another scribbled note said: ”No-one has been able to understand me, not even in cycling, not even my family. I’ve ended up alone.”
Newspapers expanded on the cocaine theory, saying Pantani had planned to go for treatment in a clinic in Bolivia run by his friend, Father Pierino Gelmini, who also runs a similar project in Italy.
”He wanted to get away from the glare of publicity,” Gelmini told the Corriere della Sera.
”Pantani refused to go to a clinic here. In Italy it would have created a media circus and he didn’t want that. He was worried what the newspapers would say and he just wanted to be left in peace.
”The idea was to take him somewhere where nobody could see him or judge him.”
Pantani’s funeral is expected to take place on Wednesday at the San Giacomo church in his hometown of Cesenatico, about 30 kilometres from Rimini.
His parents arrived in Rimini on Monday morning after receiving news of their son’s death while on holiday in Greece.
Pantani had checked into The Rose hotel last Monday and only once came down for breakfast. Staff at the hotel said he appeared ”strange and not quite there”.
The porter raised the alarm on Saturday night after Pantani had failed to emerge from his room all day. Hotel staff knocked on his door, which was locked, but received no response.
When they finally entered the room Pantani was found lying on his back half-naked.
His fellow riders said Pantani had been deeply affected by doping allegations five years ago.
Pantani’s career took a downward spiral after he was thrown off the 1999 Tour of Italy for having an abnormal blood reading and the flamboyant Italian became an almost constant target for the authorities.
Pantani came under the spotlight again during the 2001 Tour of Italy when a syringe containing insulin was found in his hotel room.
He insisted the syringe had been planted in his room but despite his pleas was banned from cycling for six months. – Sapa-AFP