UAE manager Gianetti says he was a 'victim' of Saunier Duval doping scandals

Gianetti and UAE’s sports manager Matxin Joxean Fernandez were the senior management figures of the Saunier Duval team when Riccardo Riccò tested positive for CERA on the 2008 Tour de France. Leonardo Piepoli confessed to doping that summer and subsequently tested positive.

The team continued operations as Geox and they won the 2011 Vuelta a España with Juan José Cobo, who was later stripped of victory after anomalies were detected in his biological passport. 

“I made the mistake of taking them into the team,” Gianetti told L’Équipe of Riccò, Piepoli and Cobo, and he denied that he had been aware of their doping while he was their team manager.

“I should have reacted differently, been clearer with the press, explained that I was a victim. But my main concern was to save the jobs of 70 people. We don’t know what our children get up to when they’re in their bedrooms, nor do we know what cyclists get up to at home. 

“And before taking on Riccò, I’d asked him to go to the UCI to be tested. The UCI then sent me a document stating that he did indeed have a naturally high haematocrit level of over 50%. I feel like the victim of that. I had filed a complaint in Italy against the riders who had caused me to lose sponsors and who had damaged my reputation.”

Gianetti was a pro rider from 1986 to 2002, and he enjoyed his greatest success with Polti in the mid-1990s. He won Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1995, and he was outsprinted by Johan Museew to the 1996 World Championships in Lugano.

When L’Équipe put it to Gianetti that his career had coincided with cycling’s EPO era, he said, “Yes, I saw all that; it was a strange time.” Asked if he had used EPO, Gianetti said, “No.”

Gianetti spent 10 days in hospital after he collapsed during the 1998 Tour de Romandie, an episode that was the subject of an investigation by a judge in Lausanne after doctors raised concerns.

Quoted by the New York Times in October 1998, Gianetti said: “Yes, I was very ill with an infection, but I didn’t inject myself with anything. The investigation is not against me. It is against somebody who could have given me something.”

Asked to revisit the episode by L’Équipe on Saturday, Gianetti said: “It’s a personal matter; whatever I had to say, I’ve already said it.”

Tadej Pogačar will win the Tour de France for a record-equalling fifth time in Paris on Sunday after arguably his most dominant display to date, which included an astonishing victory at Alpe d’Huez on Friday.

Asked if Pogačar’s reputation was sullied by the past doping scandals on Gianetti’s former team, the UAE CEO said: “In any case, Tadej is so strong that, in any team, there would be doubts about him. I’m now doing my job. I’ve brought in over €600 million into cycling since 2004, by signing lots of contracts and offering salaries...”