Claudio Bonivento
Marco Pantani - Il Pirata

The film is an absolute must-see, very deep and introspective, a source of many reflections on life, death, and success. I love biographies, especially when they are so detailed and not trivial.

The story of Marco Pantani in the film starts right from the beginning. A child who grows up healthy in a simple and welcoming environment, in an extended family with strong foundations from hard work. The relationship with his parents, grandparents, a beloved child yet fundamentally insecure.

His talent for cycling is recognized and nurtured immediately. The love for Cristina, the close family, all reinforcing ingredients for the ego of a simple and competitive boy. I was never interested in cycling, but the rise and fall of the Pirate struck me, just like all the sticky stories of talented people who self-destruct almost as a collective ritual.

The film lingers very little on Pantani as an athlete and very much on the man and his dissolute lifestyle.

Life and death were there waiting for us every weekend in the Romagna Riviera, so beloved by Marco. Falling into psychotropic substance addiction was easy in those wondrous nineties; it was for an "ordinary mortal," let alone for a champion celebrated worldwide. His encounter with drugs was almost inevitable, especially after the doping scandal.

Marco was always in Romagna, an avid frequenter of those places where people went at any cost... He was a true "Rockstar" of those "scorching" years of the choral song "sale sale e non fà male"... Marco was more than a famous man; he was the only one who racked in, when he arrived, he was the life of the party..

A theme very dear to me returns, which is that of care and the stigma of the drug addict or unbalanced person due to massive substance use. Even Pantani, who had faced his injury like a lion, continued to fight and did not want to (as an addict) heal; indeed, he denied being "sick."

In those years, there were no facilities to treat addictions, and the family was not able to manage the situation in general.

Pantani, with a simple dual diagnosis in a few years of community, could have healed, but then the end, alone and abandoned by everyone, reminds of so many familiar and unfamiliar faces that end in extreme destruction.