I read @inrng’s blog post about the sponsorship woes of Geox today. That got me thinking about the manager of this team, who has a very special history in cycling. I wrote a post back in January, explaining why Geox didn’t get their ProTour status and free ticket to the Tour de France. The reason behind this was, in my opinion, a message from ASO to Mauro Gianetti and to the world –payback for doping. As you probably know, Gianetti was team manager back in 2008 for a team called Saunier Duval. Rumour says Prudhomme was angry after Ricco tested positive and furious after Piepoli admitted the same.
Mauro Gianetti (photo by Sirotti)
His story
But, the story about Gianetti does not begin there. Born in Switzerland in 1964, Mauro Gianetti is one of the team managers who has a career as a rider behind him. Riding on several well-known teams, Gianetti had a good career over 17 years with a couple of impressive palmares under his belt: winning Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Amstel Gold Race in 1995 and being beaten only by the Lion himself, Museeuw, at the Worlds in 1996.
However, there is a dark spot to those palmares. Gianetti also has a history of being ‘creative’ in doping. This dates back to 1998 and the Tour of Romandie where Gianetti had a close encounter with death. Back then when Gianetti rode for Francaise des Jeux, he abandoned the race, reportedly because he didn’t feel good. Later that same day he fell unconscious and was rushed to a hospital in the little town Montigny. The doctors there quickly sent him on to the better-equipped hospital in Lausanne. The two doctors who treated Gianetti did several tests on him, but they suspected he had been given PFCs, or perfluorocarbon metabolites as the medical term is known. PFCs have a tremendous effect of carrying oxygen; as this NYT article says “it can carry oxygen five times the rate of hemoglobin.” Gianetti spent ten days in intensive care at the hospital, but he denied any transfusions at the time.
Career change
Gianetti didn’t stay away from professional cycling for long. He has been affiliated with Vini Caldirola and Team Coast as a rider from 1999-2002. In 2002 he became DS for an Italian team called Tacconi Sport, a position he held for one year. If it doesn’t ring a bell immediately, it is okay. The team changed its name back to Vini Calderola, until dispersed in 2005. Some famous riders were on that team back in 2002-2003, including Garzelli, Balducci, Mazzoleni, and Szmyd.
In 2004 Gianetti joined Saunier Duval-Prodir. We all know how that ended. In his July 2008 blog for Procycling Magazine, eminent journalist Daniel Friebe provided some insight into with his analysis of a 2008 L’Equipe article wherein they had talked with Stéphane Heulot, former teammate with Gianetti at FDJ in 1998 and in recent years, PR person for Saunier Duval (until 2008). Heulot described the situation to L’Equipe like this: “Doping is so ingrained in certain managers, like Gianetti, that they can’t conceive of cycling any other way.”
Not every day the PR person speaks like that of the team manager, is it?
Gianetti didn’t stop there. He established Fuji-Servetto in 2009 and renamed it to Footon-Servetto in 2010. As a ProTour team, the Servetto squad allowed Gianetti to participate in the Tour both years, something Prudhomme and the ASO is said to have disliked. New rules meant that Gianetti had to reorganise and Geox was created. In order to gain free passes to the biggest races, Gianetti hired Sastre and Menchov, but things didn’t go according to plan this year either. The palmares didn’t live up to the expectations and now the team is trying to attract new sponsors. Well, Cobo won the Vuelta, but that just isn’t enough, it seems.
As an additional trivia point, Mauro Gianetti’s son, Noe Gianetti, came on board Footon-Servetto and is currently riding for Geox.
The future
I’m just wondering, is this the last we have seen of Gianetti? He seems to have several lives, more than one, in fact. Both Vaughters and Freire have earned their nicknames of ‘El Gato’, what do we call Gianetti?
5 Comments
This guy is so dirty it’s such the desperation and old school mentality of the sport that keep him in the game. As the sport cleans itself up and goes global and follows the anti-doping lead of Garmin and HTC and Sky, people like Gianetti will disappear. But never fast enough.
I find it strange that people like Gianetti are getting invited back into the sport numerous times, again and again. Sadly, he is not alone. Like you’re saying @TheTwistedSpoke, things are improving and time is on our side but never fast enough.
Words of wisdom:
Mauro Gianetti, 1997 (after his hospitalisation, linked to PFC use): “I was very ill with an infection, but I didn’t inject myself with anything. I thought somebody had given me something that was bad for my health. The investigation is not against me. It is against somebody who could have given me something.”
Mauro Gianetti, Saunier Duval DS, 2008: “I can’t help but feel let down by someone to whom I gave my utter confidence. […] I was totally unaware of any doping practices going on in the team.”
David Millar, 2008 ( a Saunier Duval rider the previous year): “I think that Mauro Gianetti has been taken advantage of and he is someone I have a lot of respect for. He does not deserve this and he has a good heart. He has perhaps put a lot of trust in people that he shouldn’t have and he will learn from this. I guarantee – you watch Mauro – he will have an independent anti-doping programme within the team by the end of the year. He was close to doing it last year, and now he is going to have to extend his budget and get that programme in place. It is by doing that the sport will change.”
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