http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2004...cling.features

Pantani's body had grown so dependent on these injections that it
could no longer produce red blood cells.

On his arrival at Turin's Centro Traumatologico Ortopedico at 3.20pm,
doctors were startled to discover blood values that were abnormal,
almost bizar his haematocrit, or red cell count, was 60 per cent
(50 per cent is high); his haemoglobin was 20.8g per 100ml (18g is
noteworthy). These values then plummeted: on 25 October, with 15.9 per
cent haematocrit and 5.8g haemoglobin, it took a transfusion to save
his life.

After which the anaemia miraculously cleared. Someone, it seemed, had
injected Pantani with the genetically engineered blood-booster
erythropoietin, known in sport as the doping agent EPO. At the age of
just 25, Pantani's body had grown so dependent on these injections
that it could no longer produce red blood cells.