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Vincenzo Nibali at start of 2016 Giro d'Italia Stage 19 (PHOTO CREDIT ANSA - PERI - DI MEO - ZENNARO).jpgVincenzo Nibali threatens lawsuit against TV show that claims he missed drugs test
Vincenzo Nibali is reportedly threatening to sue the producers of a TV show after it was alleged that he missed a blood test after winning the 2015 Italian national road race championship – the claim made by the rider who finished second, and who is serving an eight-year ban after testing positive for EPO in the same race.
In a report on Italia 1 programme Le Iene (The Hyenas) on Sunday evening runner-up Francesco Reda, who was riding for Team Idea 2010 ISD, claimed blood tests were not carried out on himself, defending champion Nibali, and three other riders immediately after the race which finished at Superga, Turin, because the necessary equipment was missing.
“The doctor said, ‘there’s a big problem, we don’t have the kit for doing the blood tests’,” Reda told the programme. He claimed that Dr Roberto Bima, the anti-doping representative of national governing body for cycling, the FCI, responded with the words, “For me, the test is null and void.”
The missing equipment was flown in a couple of hours after the race finished with Reda among riders to be tested – he would prove positive for EPO and be handed an eight-year ban as a result.
But he claimed Nibali had not undergone a blood test, saying that at the initial control, when the testing kit was found to be missing: “He went in for five minutes and came out with a white envelope. But he was there for five minutes, you understand what that means?”
Dr Bima’s notes are reported to have recorded that the testing kit arrived in Turin at 1926 hours, after which Reda and another rider were tested, but also make reference to Nibali and two other cyclists having already completed testing.
The implication from Reda is, how could Nibali have completed an anti-doping control and its accompanying paperwork in just five minutes – especially if the equipment necessary to carry out a blood test wasn’t there?
After the programme was transmitted on Sunday evening, Nibali tweeted pictures of what appear to be documents establishing that he had indeed been tested in accordance with anti-doping regulations.
The reigning Giro d’Italia champion wrote: “My tests were in order, the problem lies with those who have defamed me,” with hashtags that translate as “goodnight” and “peaceful dreams.”
I miei controlli sono regolari i problemi sono per i diffamatori ! #Buonanotte #sonnitranquilli pic.twitter.com/0O9fJfqSgb
— Vincenzo Nibali (@vincenzonibali) October 16, 2016
The following day, Nibali’s lawyer, Fausto Malucchi, was rather more forthright, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“He called me at midnight,” said Malucchi. “He was furious. He’s uncompromising when his name is linked to the word ‘doping'.
“The report was scandalous,” he went on, saying it had no foundation and was based on nothing more than “bar-room chat.”
He added: “Vincenzo undertook that test straight after the podium, fully in accordance with the rules, and transparently. If other people have a problem with that, it’s not our problem.”
Nibali and his lawyers are already said to be taking legal action against the same programme after a separate report earlier this month that repeated claims by ex-professional cyclist Danilo Di Luca, banned for life in 2013 for a third anti-doping rule violation, that it was impossible to finish in the top 10 of the Giro d’Italia without doping.
A separate legal action had already been instituted on behalf of Nibali against Di Luca for that allegation, and his lawyer added: “We are drawing up a complaint to the broadcasting authorities and are considering filing a civil complaint against Le Iene and Mediaset,” the media company founded by Sivio Berlusconi that owns Italia 1.
“To see Italy’s greatest cyclist, who has always been a symbol of clean sport, being treated like this hurts,” added Malucchi.
The claim against Nibali, who was reigning Tour de France champion when he took that 2015 national road title, comes as the other two men to have won the yellow jersey in the past five years, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, are under scrutiny due to their use of medicines under Therapeutic Use Exemptions.
In Wiggins’ case, attention has also been focused on the delivery of a mysterious package to Team Sky at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné, which is now the subject of a UK Anti-Doping investigation.
Nibali, who leaves Astana at the end of the year to join the new Bahrain Merida team, has hinted he will skip next year’s Tour de France and will instead look to defend his Giro d’Italia title in the 100th edition of the race, which is said to be paying a visit to the Sicilian’s home city, Messina.
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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- rogerwb 1 hour 53 sec ago
Generalisations are valid in this case; there are enough boomers with negative attitudes to young people to be able to block good things like this....
- mattw 5 hours 59 min ago
This risks turning me into a hanger and flogger....
- wtjs 9 hours 59 min ago
In SE London, psychopath riders are the majority of people on bicycles Oh dear! another festive stealth anti-cyclist ☃️
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Well, you know the BMW drivers' saying: knock that house (hospital, social housing, care home, hospital...) down, could save 30 seconds on the trip!
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I had the pleasure of owning two of the featured builders here, in my history. When I joined the Army in 1971, I took with me my curly Hetchins:...
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Could Siobhán paint it red and noone would notice it?
- Spangly Shiny 1 day 3 hours ago
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
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And a Happy Christmas to you, road.cc staff!
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19 comments
funny how it's always the guilty dopers who have been found out and banned who throw all these accusations about isn't it??
Like Tyler Hamilton? It doesn't prove anything either way, but I suppose it's people who feel they have nothing to lose by making allegations.
“To see Italy’s greatest cyclist, who has always been a symbol of clean sport, being treated like this hurts,” added Malucchi.
Nibali, of Astana (Vino & Bruyneel fame) who won the tour in 2014 in a ridiculously dominant fashion.
If the testing kit wasn't there how was he tested ?
And tweeting a picture of 2 bits of paper with some scribble on isn't what you would call water tight evidence.
'Are you clean?'
'Yes'
'Oh, right here you go, here's some paper with your name on'
Hmm.
What should he do then? What is enough?
funny how it's always the guilty dopers who have been found out and banned who throw all these accusations about isn't it??
You're laughing at the wrong thing. It's the testing that is a joke. In most cases dopers aren't caught by the tests, they're sold out by disgruntled colleagues. The anti-dopers learn something from the process, but by that time they've moved on.
Nibali has never seemed white, at all, to me. His connections to murky teams and DS's means that he certainly knows a lot more than he's letting on. But the signed pieces of paper are as meaningless as a Trump campaign policy.
Iactually think it is up to us to discern when there is anything to answer.
All the process appears to have been gone through, paperwork is in place, a convicted drug cheat alleges a wrongdoing by the authorities - implies a faking of the process. So recheck that your process is robust.
Its the adage - you cant prove a negative - which I know is tosh really but the point is if you cannot find a case to answer then there is no case to answer.
I haven't seen a drug cheat story in cycling for a while - last one was the paralympic cyclist at Rio I think.
Of course the last corruption story about an anti doping agency was? Oh yeah back to my bette noire of the moment Russia's
So I'll continue to ignore these stories and be frustrated that I have no information on whether I should trust Russian cyclists, can they declare that all the out of competition testing they have undergone was done by a real authority?
Isn't it up to the FCI to explain why they managed some, but not all of the tests after the race?
What should Nibali do? His doping control certificates aren't satisfactory? He's happy to contest the suggestion in court? There is no way to satisfy us all, particularly journalists, that any cyclist is clean. These guys can do no right. Professional sport places unnatural demands on the people who take part. They have to win to keep the sponsors happy and earn a living but not by much to keep the media happy.
Cycling is subject to a scrutiny that no other sport is. We had all hoped that cycling could go through some sort of clean up process and become a beacon of anti doping success. It's done whereabouts (before any other sport), it's helped to develop new tests for EPO among other advancements. It's now 18 years since Festina and still it is easier to read about allegations of wrong doing than results.
If you look at the list of active UKAD bans, cycling isn't even in the top 3 dirtiest sports in Britain. The average rugby fan couldn't tell you that though...
I wouldn't really throw sticky bottle'n in there with doping/pinning/TUEsdays.
Nibali wasn't thrown out for sticky bottle. He was thrown out for making it obvious on cameras.
It's all about image.
Look at drafting behind cars after a mechanical/crash. Huge advantage but it doesn't look bad on camera to the general public so they let it fly.
I understood that the issue with Nibali's sticky bottle was that he was towed off the front of one sizeable group and up to the next group up the road. He wasn't alone and trying to chase back on after a mechanical or crash!
“To see Italy’s greatest cyclist, who has always been a symbol of clean sport, being treated like this hurts,” added Malucchi.
Really?
image.jpeg
Remember Froome Mk. I getting chucked from the Giro in 2010?
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/racing/giro-ditalia/froome-disqualif...
It's not the same as being a drugs cheat.
True, but his lawyer can't really claim he is the embodiment of racing fairly either!
Nibali clears an issue up in 5 mins that would have taken Wiggins, Brailsford and a Sky PR team 2 weeks to make an unconvincing balls-up of.
Are you the sort of person that believes Trump is winning because he says so. Because to me it sounds like there's a huge great looming hole in Nibali's position.
Why is there a great looming hole in his position? He's said I've done the tests, here they are, I'm happy to go to court to discuss further if you'd like.
Nibali's been cleaning up bike races since he was a kid. I'd far sooner believe Nibali is clean than a certain British rider who went from grupetto fodder to, at age 28, somehow becoming the most dominant GC rider in a generation.
I'm certainly not arguing that Sky haven't made an unconvincing balls-up, but the question isn't whether Nibali had the proper paperwork to show he'd done the test, but whether he should have been given that paperwork in the first place. Nibali showing that envelope isn't really any different from Sky getting their TUEs. The paperwork was all in place, but what is being questioned is the process leading up to it.
Threatening legal action is a tried-and-tested way of backing up a strenuous denial - you don't actually have to go ahead with it, just the threat is enough to sound genuine, and it also puts people off making accusations if they don't have concrete proof and can't afford a lawsuit. The fact he's already suing Di Luca does at least show he's putting his money where his mouth is. I'm not setting too much store by these allegations, as convicted dopers accusing others will always just sound like sore losers, but just tweeting a photo of the paperwork hasn't cleared up the issue.