If Tadej Pogacar, still untouchable on Saturday at the Tour of Lombardy, has to deal with suspicion, it is also because of the pedigree of his leaders at Team UAE-Emirates.
As expected, the Tour of Lombardy came down to a new recital by Tadej Pogcar on Saturday. Like a fortnight before during the World Championships and like the previous weekend on the Tour of Emilia-Romagna, the Slovenian crushed the race, winning with more than three minutes ahead of Remco Evenepoel at the end of a solo ride of more than fifty kilometers.
Tadej Pogacar’s insolent display of force once again aroused strong reactions and only reinforced the doubts of the most skeptical. For many of them, the domination of the world champion can only be explained by doping, physiological or mechanical. And some did not hesitate to support their skepticism, to recall the sulphurous past of the leaders of the UAE-Emirates Team, Mauro Gianetti and at the head.
Tadej Pogacar’s entourage has already been accused of doping
Emirates team boss Mauro Gianetti almost lost his life to doping in the fall of 1998, spending three days in a coma, between life and death, after consuming PFC, an experimental product. resembling EPO, and made me feel unwell at the Tour of Lombardy. But the Swiss was also at the head of the Saunier-Duval team when Ricardo Ricco was caught by the patrol during the 2008 Tour de France, testing positive for EPO. Enough to make Christian Prudhomme say that the former winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège was not a “paragon of virtue”.
The CV of Matxin Fernandez, the other big boss of Team Emirates, is barely less heavy. The Spaniard, after learning amateur cycling and then officiating at Mapei, worked alongside Mauro Gianetti at the head of the Saunier-Duval team. He was also at the head of the Geox team when Juan José Cobo won the Tour of Spain in 2011 before he was also convicted of doping.
