Padova Investigation

Up until now, I was convinced that the most appropriate location to answer charges was a courtroom, and for this I have never commented on the various media reports that for years published acts that should be secreted, with regards to the mega-investigation being carried on in Padova.

The latest press campaign orchestrated by my old pals at La Gazzetta and La Repubblica, defined even by Marco Bonarrigo as "out of control journalism", forced me to change my behavior, and express some simple considerations.

 

DI LUCA - who is he? Oh... the cyclist who resulted positive for Cera in the Giro of 2009, who in exchange for a much shorter disqualification blurted out some important revelations, "defined the system", spoke of St. Moritz and Mt. Teide, where Ferrari performed "prohibited practices such as blood transfusions". He knows everything, Di Luca; a shame that I neither ever met the guy, nor was he ever present in my training camps, nor, to my knowledge, had he ever been those same locations.

Di Luca, the guy who, once his reduced penalty was over, went into schools to teach on doping in sports, swearing that he did do wrong and never to do it again, only to be positive yet again for EPO, during last year's Giro.

Mr. Danilo Di Luca, I'm afraid you'll probably have to deal with other problems, to be added to the many already accumulated in your "reckless life".

 

SCARPONI: "But you're convinced that I could have won the Giro, or not?"

FERRARI: maybe "if you had a bag you would have!" A joke about his past involvement in Operacion Puerto, nothing more than that. Doping after all has always been a "topic of discussion" in the world (not only in cycling): at dining tables, in the athlete's rooms, in bar chats, without any of this having any serious meaning.

"I did it the first day": for the investigators that means a bag of blood; more likely it is something else, given the context.

 

VISCONTI - I am not even going to comment on the splutters published by La Gazzetta: surely blood doping and albumin were never the subject of our conversations.

 

KREUZIGER - Roman, if you have yet to figured it all out, your problems with the Biological Passport are simply the price to pay for having worked with me in 2007, and for later declaring that "Ferrari had prescribed me only training programs", which is the absolute truth.

At this point, just tell it all, the Truth: how in 2010 you were privately confronted about two phone calls with myself, in which you asked about, and then declined, the possibility to resume our cooperation.

WHO did confront you about those calls, HOW could he be aware of them? Maybe it was a sport technician, a former coach of Di Luca, co-worker, friend and even neighbor (!!!) to one of the Finanzieri at the orders of PM Roberti, while leading the investigation of Padova?

 

TASCHLER - are we really sure it was EPO? Maybe, just maybe, it could have been vitamin B12: Dobetin vials, 2000 u..., smaller than 5000u, to do half: 1000u. Just maybe.

The transcripts are dated September 2010, yet the mentioned race event (IBU Cup) is about 4 months later (late January 2011)...

 

SCHWAZER'S MOTHER - "I'm worried about Alex". As I have described in the past, Mrs. Marie Luise contacted me several times on the phone, worried about the serious psychological distress Alex was going through at the time, exacerbated by further family problems. A sleazy example of "journalistic abuse" (which alone is worth a lawsuit) is the following assertion by the author: "With this message she suggests to know about the association with Ferrari: for doping".

 

PAOLO SLONGO - he would have, according to the investigators, "frequent contact with Ferrari": yes, of course, every morning, in front of the buffet breakfast at the hotel Parador del Teide, with the topic: "is it better to have eggs with bacon or muesli with yogurt?"...

 

MENTIONED ATHLETES - many of them, I simply do not know them: Marco Marcato, Dimitri Kozontchuk, Ivan Rovny, Egor Silin...

 

PHOTOS OF MONTECATINI - we are all waiting so anxiously for them...