Nibali, Astana under further scrutiny after claims Michele Ferrari attended team training camp in 2013

Shane Stokes - December 9, 2014

Vincenzo Nibali made repeated denials during this year’s Tour de France that he had ever met Michele Ferrari, but that insistence is under the microscope today after La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the banned doctor had attended a team training camp in November 2013.

According to the Italian paper, Ferrari attended the team hotel in Montecatini Terme thirteen months ago. Unbeknownst to the team, so too did anti-doping investigators, who reportedly have photographs of the doctor talking to various members of the team.

Under CONI’s rules, anyone working with Ferrari since 2002 is liable to a suspension. In addition to that, La Gazzetta states that licence holders are obliged to inform sporting authorities if they even see Ferrari.

USADA issued a lifetime ban against the doctor in 2012 over his work with Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service team.

It has confirmed that Nibali was in attendance at the Astana training camp in question.

The newspaper hasn’t made clear where these photos will be used, whether they are simply for the ongoing Padova investigation in Italy or if copies have been presented to the UCI Licence Commission currently scrutinising the team after a spate of positive tests in recent months.

WorldTour team riders Valentin and Maxim Iglinskiy both tested positive for EPO in August, while three riders with the Continental squad – namely Kazakhstan’s national champion Ilya Davidenok, Artur Fedosseyev and Victor Okishev all tested positive for anabolic androgenic steroids.

Davidenok has been a stagiaire with the WorldTour team since August.

Those positives prompted the UCI to instruct its Licence Commission to examine the teams and to decide if there were grounds to take action. That commission is due to announce its findings this week, and could in theory refuse to give Astana a licence for 2015.

General manager Alexandre Vinokourov has said that the Continental team has been put on hold, but hasn’t made clear if it could restart.

Today’s claim that Ferrari met team members in November last year is a further blow to the team’s prospects.

The news comes days after a report in La Repubblica claimed that there was a link between Ferrari and the Astana team.

It said that various members of the team were implicated by the four year Padova investigation, which has been handed over to the Italian Olympic Committee CONI. The report runs to 550 pages and apparently includes the names of a large number of current and former riders.

Banned race walker Alex Schwarzer has cooperated with investigators after his own positive test and has reportedly implicated others.

He said that when he met Ferrari on Mount Teide in the Canary islands in 2010, that he saw a sheet of paper with Ferrari’s handwriting mentioning the names of Stefano Garzelli, Francesco Masciarelli and Leonardo Bertagnolli on it. In addition to that, he said he personally saw those riders at the hotel too.

Current and former Astana riders Michele Scarponi, Enrico Gasparotto, Vladimir Gusev and Evgeni Petrov himself have all been linked to Ferrari by investigations. As for Vinokourov, he worked with the banned doctor in the past. The now-retired rider admitted in a press conference prior to the start of the 2007 Tour de France that he used the doctor as his coach.

He insisted that there was nothing untoward about their dealings, but he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion in that race and was handed a two year ban.

According to La Gazzetta, 90 riders are named in the Padova report, including some who were previously unsuspected. It adds that links between Nibali and Ferrari haven’t been found.

Those 90 names may take time to emerge, but Astana’s future vis-à-vis the UCI WorldTour licence will become clearer in the coming days.

If photos do indeed prove the team was visited by Ferrari, the chances of remaining within the top division of the sport are looking very shaky indeed.

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Also see: Ferrari denies reports he attended Astana training camp, calls on team to sue

alexvalentine

The UCI has a big problem with the WordTour being so dependent on the money of questionable individuals in countries run by oligarchs. I’m all for revoking Astana’s license, but what happens to all the employees of the team? Do they still get paid? Nibili’s performance in the TDF has to come in to question, where there is smoke there is usually fire and he seemed to have an effortless performance in some of the key stages last year.
- flashingPedals
  
  I feel that if Cookson is to establish and build a credible alternative to the demolished reputation of professional cycling, he’d better start by removing Managers, team owners, and ex riders within management, whom have “shit on the fingers”.
  Just how Astana have stayed in the bunch, with the multiple corrupt bunch of c#nts, who’ve managed that team, is as clear as a Mars inserted up Verbruggen’s arsehole.
jules

unbelievable. deny them a licence. no excuses.
drustan

20 teams linked to Ferrari. Why single pick Astana? Proves the testing system just doesn’t work. Its a waste of time. How can anyone believe any result now, whether, its running, cycling, swimming, soccer, football, rugby, any aerobic sport in fact.
donncha

Something about this claim doesn’t add up. If Ferrari moved to Switzerland because he knew the Italians were bugging his phone, and everyone in cycling knew the Padua investigation was ongoing and everyone in Italy knew that working with Ferrari is illegal, then why the hell would you invite him to a team camp IN ITALY!? Seems monumentally stupid. Surely you’d hold the camp somewhere else?

Maybe there’s an element of truth to Michele’s denial???
- jules
  
  you could say the same thing about blatant doping in today’s pro cycling scene, yet…..
  - donncha
    
    Yes, but Ferrari is smart, Very smart. He’s outwitted the anti-doping authorities for most of the last 25 years. Just seems odd to me that he’d go to a camp in Italy.
    
    Maybe he was deploying the “hiding in plain sight” strategy :-)
    - jules
      
      there’s no doubt he’s on the genius spectrum - with doping practices at least - he’s turned it into a science. but one of the factors that has acted in his favour for not getting penalised is that anti-doping rules are focused on athletes. the USADA ban on Ferrari was a step forward - but enforcing it, when he does his work in secret anyway, will be difficult. (presumably he’s cut back on public appearances now)
    - A
      
      Yes this is far too strange. I cannot believe it myself.
      - jules
        
        try harder. this is team managed by Vino
        
        A
        
        It is not Vino that I doubt. It is actually that I doubt Ferrari would be so blatant and I also wonder if Ferrari would even be interested in doping riders of the current generation. Although it would seem in character I don’t believe it would be - he was a coach foremost and interested in many facets of cycling, not just the needles. Although I could very well be wrong.
        
        jules
        
        he does it for-profit. he’s made a fortune out of it. he took a decent slice of Lance’s and other riders’ winnings. i have little doubt he’s still trying.
        
        A
        
        Perhaps. However I honestly hope that he is not.
- velocite
  
  This article seems to be saying that it is USADA that has ‘confirmed’ that Ferrari was at this training camp in Italy. Does this mean the ‘doping investigators’ were from USADA? In Italy? In 2013? So far this does seem a little rumour-ish. Will buy the book when it comes out. Maybe that’s what Vicenzo will be doing if Astana is rubbed out: writing.
  - Warren Jennings
    
    No, it says USADA gave Ferrari the 2012 ban. The Nov 2013 investigators who got the pics were probably the Italian Padova investigators.
    
    The media is driving the case against Astana pretty hard leading up to the UCI Protour licence decision. I think this is a great thing. If the UCI won’t do the right thing on their own, get public pressure behind it. Even if he was only visiting catching up with old friends (clients), it still looks very bad.
    
    Will be a shame if Gazzetta got a sneaky leaked look at the investigator’s pics but they can’t be released for publication. Will be even more of a shame if they misinterpreted the pics and it isn’t Ferrari after all…
    - velocite
      
      Read the article again, Warren. The sentence “It has confirmed that Nibali was in attendance at the Astana training camp in question” follow the statement about USADA. It’s clearly wrong, but that is what it says.
      
      And I don’t know why it would be a shame if there are pics and they don’t show Ferrari. Did you consider that the best thing would be for the truth to emerge?
ron

The UCI needs to employ Ferarri. If he earns big bucks working for the good guys (testers) then the lazy dopers wont stand a chance.
- jules
  
  they already tried that. Conconi (Ferrari was his protege) was paid a small fortune by the IOC to develop an EPO test. he did tons of research on EPO’s use as a blood booster, but in the end he couldn’t quite come up with a means of detecting its use….
Bimbolo

The pic looks more like 1983!
Black Panther

How can anyone have thought Astana wasn’t on a road to disaster with a blood doper and briber ath the helm?
Stefano Ferro

It’s incredible how Europe is together when is down to finance but than has different laws based on the country.
Ferrari is in Switzerland because he can’t work there. Obviously somehow is able to work in Switzerland. Rules and laws are more “gentle” there.
Fuentes is still very active in Spain, where most of the riders have residence. Wonder why….
It’s not Astana the problem, it’s just one of the many teams that race at top level…
What about all the other teams that have contacts with Fuentes….or what about the riders that live or used to live in Switzerland which may have direct access to Ferrari without photos
So confusing,…..