Rimini (Italy): Italian cycling great Marco Pantani died last month of a cocaine overdose, judicial sources said on Friday quoting a coroner’s report.

The doctor who carried out the autopsy deposited his brief draft findings with judicial authorities, the sources said. The report said Pantani died after an “acute intoxication of cocaine which caused an edema (accumulation of liquid) in the brain and lungs”.

The report added: “At this stage, there are no concrete elements to support the hypothesis of a death caused by suicide.”

The complete report is due to be published in two weeks.

Pantani, who won the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in 1998, was found dead in a hotel room in Rimini on February 14. He was one of Italy’s most popular sportsmen until the 1999 Giro when he was thrown out of the race for failing a test for haematocrit — an indicator, though not proof, of the use of performance-enhancing drugs.