ASTANA Case

I feel obliged, albeit very reluctantly, to once again deny the latest MEDIA BULLSH*T with regards to my presence ("during the night", or even in broad daylight, if you prefer) at the Astana Team Training Camp in Montecatini (I've been in that town, if I remember correctly, in 1994 to taste the famous waffles) last year in November.

 

The bombshell of ''the dark shadow of Ferrari" is absolutely FALSE and whoever has published it will respond about it in the appropriate courts: I hope that the Kazakh team will ask adequate compensation for the damages.

 

The article in Gazzetta dello Sport, among other extraordinarily confusing statements, claims that I am living between Lugano and Ferrara: I always resided in Ferrara, for 26 years at the same address, and I never even stopped in Lugano, nor have a study or home in that location.

 

Up to a few years ago I coached some of the Astana athletes, including Vinokurov: it has never been a secret, we never hid anything, we attended training venues where there were many other athletes, all in broad daylight.

Curiously Teide or St. Moritz, back then "suspicious" locations as defined by the very UCI, have now been "cleared" and are more popular than ever with cyclists and teams above any suspicion...