An Italian man was convicted on Monday in the cocaine death of former Tour de France champion Marco Pantani and sentenced to four and a half years in prison, the Italian news agency ANSA said.
Four people were arrested for allegedly selling drugs to the 34-year-old Italian cyclist, who died in February 2004 in a hotel room in the Adriatic resort town of Rimini.
Three of the four had entered plea bargains in the case and have already served their sentences. Fabio Carlino was convicted in a separate trial of unintentionally causing death as a consequence of drug dealing, ANSA reported late on Monday.
The court was closed, and officials could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Police have said that the defendants were identified by monitoring telephone conversations and through numbers stored on Pantani's mobile phone.
A coroner has found that the cyclist died from cocaine poisoning that appeared to be accidental.
Pantani, Italy's most popular cyclist, won the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia in 1998. But he was suspended the next year from the Giro after failing a random blood test, and his career was damaged by several doping investigations.
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