The bicycle used by Marco Pantani (opens in new tab) to beat Lance Armstrong (opens in new tab) to victory atop Mont Ventoux in the 2000 Tour de France (opens in new tab) is up for auction in Italy.

Bianchi's bike, a similar bike used by Pantani at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, several signed jerseys, trophies, and paintings of cycling will be auctioned in Milan and via the Internet on December 9. The auction will be organized by Aste Bolaffi (opens in new tab) Auction House as part of its Sports Memorabilia Auction.

All bikes and objects will be offered from the Mercatone Uno museum. Mercatone Uno, an Italian household goods chain that sponsored Pantani for most of his career, recently went bankrupt.

According to Boraffi, the two Pantani bikes were donated to Mercatone Uno after being used in 2000.

The first was for the Tour de France, where Pantani attacked with Lance Armstrong on the famous Mont Ventoux and won a stage to Courchevel, but ultimately abandoned the race due to stomach problems. To avoid a clash with the race leader's yellow jersey, the pink color of the Mercatone Uno was used instead of the usual yellow.

Armstrong claimed that he was much stronger on the climb to Mont Ventoux and gave Pantani the stage win, which only exacerbated an already tense relationship between the two.

"A lot of that animosity stems from what happened at Ventoux in 2000," Armstrong told Cycling News in 2014, the 10th anniversary of Pantani's death.

"I'm not here to glorify anything, and we all know what happened that day. I told him, in my bad Italian, 'You can win the championship. He thought I was telling him to 'run faster. My Italian was terrible, so I could have said anything, but we were fast enough. What happened that day did not make things better.

The second bike was built for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, and Pantani was selected to represent Italy in the five road races along with Michele Bartoli, Paolo Bettini, Danilo Di Luca, and Francesco Casagrande.

Jan Ullrich won the gold medal, and then-Telecom teammates Alexandre Vinokurov and Andres Kloden made the podium; a second bicycle was also estimated to sell for 25,000 to 30,000 euros.

In addition, the yellow jersey from the 1998 Tour de France and two pink jerseys from the Giro d'Italia were signed by Pantani.

Pantani died on February 14, 2004, under the influence of cocaine and antidepressants, locked in a hotel room in Rimini.

A winner of the 1998 Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, Pantani suffered greatly from substance abuse and mental health-related problems after being disqualified from the 1999 Giro d'Italia due to high blood hematocrit.

Pantani's mother, always defending her son's honor, has admitted that he may have used blood-boosting EPO during his working years. Tonina hired renowned Italian lawyer Antonio De Lencis to investigate all the circumstances of Pantani's death and managed to launch a new investigation in 2014, fueled by Italian media coverage that tugged at the heartstrings of Pantani's enduring popularity among the Tifosi.

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