But I finished watching Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist and felt as if I hadn’t seen a traditional sports documentary at all, because the love of the sport didn’t come across to me as a pure and clear motive for its making. Muhammad Ali, as an example, is already well established as an iconic, untouchable figure in When We Were Kings. It’s easy to celebrate him. Pantani is a very different character. An astonishing sportsman, he won both the Tour De France and the Giro D’Italia in 1998 and died alone, only six years later, from cocaine poisoning. Known and loved in Italy as Il Pirata (the pirate) because of his bandana and earring, he was the figurehead of professional cycling at a time when doping became a huge issue, and he fell from grace for possible drug use in a very public fashion. So it’s hard to watch this film about his life and feel that he embodies a sheer love of cycling. That’s where the final strand of writer/director James Erskine’s film comes into play. The widespread use of drugs, particularly EPO, gets examined closely, and a culture is revealed that chews up and spits out athletes for the sake of sponsorship deals. Here the film loses its focus on Pantani, and it never is actually able to say whether he fell victim to certain pressures or not. This aspect is handled economically and without enough clarity, I felt. Also I could have done with less slow motion imagery of wheels and pedals turning, which felt as if a tragic end to great talent was edging towards being expressed as a melodrama. So I think there’s a confusion at the heart of the film about how to present Pantani. If the title of the film is taken from the play by Dario Fo, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, then that suggests blame is being shrugged off by many people for the part they played in an innocent man’s death. But his family appeared to have supported him and tried to help him. His colleagues (apart from a really interesting spat with Lance Armstrong that doesn’t get a lot of screen time) all recognised his talent and aided him in his desire to win. If doping is endemic in cycling then we have somewhere to point a finger. It’s a shame the film isn’t able to make a strong statement about that issue. In the end, Pantani’s fall from grace remains murky, far from illuminated, and very, very sad. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.