He signed one of the most stunning performances in modern cycling.
Winner at the end of a breathtaking time at the Planche des Belles Filles, Slovenian Tadej Pogacar won his first Tour de France on Sunday at the age of 21 after removing the yellow jersey from the shoulders of his compatriot Primoz Roglic.
But if the young rider, third in the Tour of Spain last year, does not come out of nowhere, neither does his entourage within his UAE-Emirates team.
First, Mauro Gianetti.
Former rider and winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Amstel Gold Race, the Swiss is the boss of the training.
In 1998, he spent three days in a coma and twelve in intensive care during the Tour de Romandie, which he played for La Française des Jeux.
A Swiss doctor attributes this visit to the hospital to doping and taking perfluorocarbon (PFC), an artificial oxygen carrier.
As a supervisor, Mauro Gianetti is also known for having taken care of the Saunier Duval team.
On the Tour de France 2008, the team saw its leader, the Italian Ricardo Ricco, test positive for EPO.
The Swiss, defined at the time by the boss of the event Christian Prudhomme as “not a paragon of virtue”, left the Tour with his team.
Two other members of the formation of the boiler manufacturer, Leonardo Piepoli and Juan José Cobo were also convicted of doping.
The man who spotted him banned from starting on the Tour in 2000
In the same formation, one could find in the framework Joxean Matxin Fernandez.
The Spaniard, who was exulting with Pogacar at the finish on Saturday at the Planche des Belles Filles, is the one who convinced the young Slovenian to join the UAE Emirates team, heir to the Italian team Lampre, involved in several doping cases.
Finally, the man who spotted Tadej Pogacar, his compatriot Andrej Hauptman, does not have a flawless CV either.
Third in the World Championship in 2001, he was banned from taking the start of the Tour de France a year earlier because of a hematocrit level, the volume of red blood cells in the blood, too high.
Asked about the liabilities of Gianetti and Fernandez in L'Equipe on Monday, the fresh winner of the Grande Boucle felt he was “too young to remember that time.
I was ten in 2008 and it feels weird to talk about it because it goes against everything I believe.
[…] In truth, it saddens me that people doubt my performance.
My only defense is to have my conscience on my side.
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