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Italy coach Davide Cassani says he's to blame for Gianni Moscon World Championship tow (+ video)

23-year-old rider who attacked in finale was disqualified after footage of earlier illegal assistance emerged

Italy’s national cycling team coach, Davide Cassani, has said that he was to blame for the illegal tow that saw Gianni Moscon disqualified from yesterday’s men’s elite road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Bergen.

Moscon, aged 23, was captured on camera taking an extended tow from the Italian team car as he tried to rejoin the main group after a crash with 37 kilometres – just under two laps of the closing circuit – remaining.

He rejoined the group of riders who would contest the race ahead of the final lap and was one of the main protagonsists, following an attack from France’s Julian Alaphilippe that could well have proved to be a race winning move.

However, the pair were swept up before the final sprint in which defending champion Peter Sagan of Slovakia snatched victory from Norway’s Alexander Kristoff to win the rainbow jersey for an unprecedented third time running.

After the race – and before his disqualification – Moscon said, apparently without irony, that he thought Italy had “raced really well, without wasting energy.”

Referring to the crash, he said: “I had to work hard to rejoin the group, I was aiming to recover in the penultimate lap so I could put everything into the final circuit.”

Following confirmation of Moscon’s disqualification and with the rider coming under heavy criticism on Twitter, Cassani tweeted: “Please. Moscon had nothing to do with it. It was me who made a mistake and I take full responsibility and apologise especially to Gianni.”

It’s not the first time Moscon has hit the headlines for the wrong reason this year.

In May, Team Sky suspended him from racing for six weeks for racially abusing FDJ rider Kevin Reza at the Tour de Romandie and told him that any repeat would lead to him being sacked.

> Team Sky suspend Gianni Moscon for six weeks for racial abuse

A rising star in the peloton, Moscon is the reigning Italian national time trial champion and finished sixth in the discipline in Bergen last week.

In April, he finished fifth at Paris-Roubaix. More recently, he was one of Chris Froome’s key support riders at the Vuelta, with Moscon himself finishing 27th overall.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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9 comments

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BehindTheBikesheds | 6 years ago
0 likes

I count 7 seconds, sure he got a tow but he was already pulling away from the other rider before he got the tow.

Rightly DQ'd but this is nowhere near as bad some of the tows we've seen. The Nibali one was utterly ridiculous

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Al__S | 6 years ago
0 likes

It takes two to sticky bottle. They're both at fault.

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Paul J | 6 years ago
2 likes

Please everyone, Moscon had nothing to do with extending his arm and holding on to the adjacent car, just like he had nothing to do with his mouth to Kevin Reza. Stop this witchhunt.

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dottigirl | 6 years ago
1 like

Very Nibali-esque, especially when you see how far behind the other cyclist is left.

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Grahamd replied to dottigirl | 6 years ago
2 likes
dottigirl wrote:

Very Nibali-esque, especially when you see how far behind the other cyclist is left.

Was thinking something very similar myself. It is time those pioneers who inovate are rewarded by having such actions named after them.

Therefore this should now simply be known as "doing a Nibali". 

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Another David | 6 years ago
1 like

Wow, a cyclist cheating.

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Rapha Nadal | 6 years ago
3 likes

He seems about as unrepentent about this as he did with the Kevin Reza incident. 

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beezus fufoon replied to Rapha Nadal | 6 years ago
4 likes
Rapha Nadal wrote:

He seems about as unrepentent about this as he did with the Kevin Reza incident. 

Team Sky have their own confessional superbus, the priests sworn to confidentiality, the communion wine, stored in jiffy bags, transubstantiates into Christ's blood with a suspiciously high haemocrit count.

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RobD | 6 years ago
2 likes

Seems like he needs a nice quiet off season keeping his head down to come back and have an issue free year next year, he's clearly a great rider, just needs to get his head in the right place and not do stupid things. Unless the DS is physically holding on to you then surely you're pretty responsible for being towed along? I know he's young but you can't really expect to get away with it, especially not with all the fans having smartphones filming it.

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