Report: Details of the Lampre Mantova investigation emerge
Corriere d♈ella Sera lifts the lid on the slow moving doping trial






While Thursday's Gazzetta dello Sport broke the news that 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Lampre-Merida has 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:signed Chris Ho🌞rner for the 2014 season, the Corriere della Sera🍨 newspaper, also owned by the RCS Media Group, has published apparent details of th🦂e Mantova doping investigation, where 25 former riders and staff linked to the team are on trial.
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168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Cunego confident ahead of Mඣa꧅ntova trial
1﷽68澳洲5最新开奖结果:Phone taps admissable as evidence in Lampr🌼e trial
Alessandro Ballan and the Mantova pharmacist Guido Nigrelli ha🔴ve already been banned by the Italian Olympic Committee. Ballan claimed he underwent ozone treatment to help him recover from the Cytomegalovirus but the WADA code prohibits any treatment that includes blood manipulation. Ballan reportedly plans to appeal against his two-year ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but has been sacked by the BM𒈔C team. Nigrelli has been banned for life.
The judge handling the Mantova t🌼rial recently ordered a specialist engineer to analyse 26 DVDs containing phone taps, video and other data collected by police during the investigation. They are considered a vital part of the trial but the public prosecutor and the defending lawyers disagree on exactly what was said because many of the conversations are in Veneto dialect.
Medicines seized during fou💧r police searches of the team between March and May 2009, will also be analysed and identified. The trial will finally begin in earnest on October 31, with 250 possible witnesses.
Saronni steps aside
Corriere della Sera ꦦdescribes Nigrelli as the 'right-hand man of Lampre team manager Giuseppe Saronni.
Saronni won the rainbow jersey in Goodwood in 1982 with a legendary late attack and was an Italian idol during the cycling boom of the seventies and eighties. He has now officially stepped aside 🍌as team manager at Lampre-Merida, with Brent Copeland taking his role. In November he also resigned as a board 🌱member and signatory of CGS Cycling Team AG, the Swiss-based company that manages the cycling team. However he remains very close to the Galbusera family that own Lampre and has considerable sway over the team.
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Saronni and the team management allegedly sent riders to Mantova to visit Nigrelli for tests, and for medicines and supplements, even if they lived in other parts of Italy. Corriere della Sera claim that phone taps reveal co⛦nversations between Nigrelli, maꦗny of the Lampre riders and directeur sportif Fabrizio Bontempi and Maurizio Piovani.
A series of code words were used to describe different products. These included ciucciotti (dummies), uova (eggs), topogigi and culatello (cured ham). Corriere della Sera claims that🌼 one of the products is actually Hygetropin, an expensive growth hormone. Nigrelli is reported to have asked former Lampre rider Pao💞lo Bossoni to find him the drug to give as a present.
The Italian newspaper also claims thꦿat Saronni made a change in the team's relation with Nigrelli in 2007, informing the riders that the team will no longer pay for Nigrelli'ꦆs services.
Saronni, the Lampre 𒈔team and many of the riders and staff implicated in the Mantova trial have denied any wrong doing.The team has changed significantly since Merida became a sponsor, signing world champion Rui Costa for 2014 and most recently Chris Horner.
Did Cunego say no?
A total of 18 riders, 15 of who rode with Lampre, will face the draཧwn out trial in Mantova before a first verdict is reached.
These i🌳nclude Ballan, who was world champion in Varese 2008 when he rode for Lampre, Marzio Bruseghin, Damiano Cunego, Simone Ponzi and Mauro Santambrogio, who tested positive in last year's Giro d'Italia while riding for the Vini Fantini team. Denmar🐈k's Michael Rasmussen was also listed as a client of Nigrelli. He has since confessed to doping from 1998 to 2010.
Emanuele Bindi was found gui🌞lty and given a one-year suspended sentence after opting to plea bargain. Francesco Tomei was found not guilty despite the public prosecutor calling for a 26-month s🎐entence.
Spanish doctor Jཧosé Ibarguren Taus is also on trial. He worked as a team doctor for Lampre and is again with🅘 the Omega Pharma-Quick Step team in 2014.
The full-page report in Corriere della Sera reveals that 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Damiano Cunego was one of the few riders at Lampre to re🔯sist the pressure to be treated and coached by Nigrelli. It seems the phone taps do not implicate the 2004 Giro d'Italia winner, even if his name is included in a detailed dossier created by anti-doping expert Sandro Donati as part of the Mantova investigation.
Cunego has always denied any wrong doing but has always avoided speaking in detail about Nigrelli and the Mantova investigation. He is part of the Lampre-Merida team for 2014. However Corriere della Sera claims he could be one of the team leaders at Fernando Alonso's new team in 2015.

Stephen is one of the most experienced member of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. He has been Head of News at Cyclingnews since 2022, before which he held the position of European editor since 2012 and previously worked for Reuters, Shift Active Media, and CyclingWeekly, among other publications.