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Danilo Di Luca (copyright Gian Mattia d'Alberto:LaPresse:RCS Sport)Former Giro d'Italia champion Danilo Di Luca banned from cycling for life
Danilo Di Luca has been banned from cycling for life following his positive test for EPO announced two days before the end of May’s Giro d’Italia, which resulted in the 2007 Giro champion’s immediate sacking by his Vini Fantini-Selle Italia team.
The 37-year-old, who has previously served two doping-related suspensions, has also been fined €35,000 by the disciplinary committee of Italy’s national Olympic committee, CONI, which confirmed the sanction in a brief statement issued this afternoon.
It also ordered him to pay €850 for the costs of its proceedings, plus 3,150 Swiss Francs relating to the costs of analysis and documentation of the samples taken from him in a random test on 29 April this year, days before the Giro d’Italia began in April.
Di Luca’s results from that date have been annulled. While he didn’t win any stages in the race, he did feature regularly in attacks and secured a number of top-ten placings.
After learning of his fate today, Di Luca, quoted on Gazzetta.it, said: “It was all already written. Clearly I have to pay for everyone else.”
When asked to describe how it felt to be the first Italian cyclist to receive a life ban for doping, he reflected: “I’ve been the first to do many things. Certainly, anyone who knows me knows that in sport I’ve won what I was able to win, I’ve never won a time trial at 60 kilometres an hour.”
Asked if he knew of someone who had, he replied cryptically, “Yes, and he’s still doing it.”
Di Luca and his lawyer, Ernesto Di Toni, are now reported to be considering whether to appeal against today’s decision.
The rider nicknamed the Killer from Spoltore – the latter being his home town in the Abbruzzo region – was first sanctioned in 2007, when he received a three-month ban for associating with Carlo Santuccione, the doctor at the centre of the Oil for Drugs investigation. Di Luca was allowed to keep the Giro title he had won earlier in the year.
In 2009, after finishing runner-up in the Giro and winning the points jersey, he was stripped of those results plus two stage wins after he tested positive for CERA, leading also to a two-year ban, later reduced to nine months after he co-operated with the authorities.
He returned to the sport with Katusha, racing the 2011 Giro with the Russian team, joining Acqua & Sapone for 2012 before switching to Vini Fantini-Selle Italia for the 2013 season.
Di Luca, who during his career also one major one-day races including the Giro di Lombardia and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, joins Lance Armstrong as one of only two Grand Tour winners to have been banned for life as a result of doping.
Unlike Armstrong, however, who was last year stripped of the seven Tour de France victories he had taken between 1999 and 2005, Di Luca’s name will continue to appear as the champion of the 2007 Giro d’Italia.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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26 comments
No. I just don't kid myself. Anti-doping control is a sticking plaster for an arterial wound.
I do presume that all riders are guilty. It does tarnish their achievements and they all know that. Perhaps shaming them is a better form of control too.
It's like road safety, people don't like the road infrastructure, but they still choose to cycle. I don't like the drugs culture, but I still follow it. I just don't build these guys up to be more than they are.
Someone suggested a 'no-holds' barred, free-for-all on the drugs front. On one hand I agree - it would certainly be more honest and it would show how far you can get, but on the other hand it is very damaging to sport and the young people that take it up. Taking all manner of drugs is likely to impact your health (Flo Jo), and without proper medical supervision it can kill you like the young Dutch amateur riders who died in their sleep from ODing on EPO. The pressure to emulate your heros would probably lead more people down this line with disastrous consequences.
The problem is that drug testing is (like improved road infrastructure) very expensive to do comprehensively and so we end up with ASL and Superhighway version which just doesn't cut it.
In respect to Di Luca - I can't say he got unlucky three times, but he was either stupid in the way he took the drugs, because as Tyler Hamilton points out, it's an IQ test of making sure you're not tested while glowing. Or he pissed off people who were willing to shop him. I don't condone the drug taking at all, but at least I have my mind and eyes open rather than burying it all and pretending there isn't a lorry over my shoulder.
Colin, some people just can't accept that at the top of professional sport, money drives everything - ultimately leading to 'performance enhancement'. Put into the mix that cycling is one of the toughest, most cruel, sacrificial, and sometimes loneliest sports that has a 100 year history of performance enhancement, then I find it hard to believe there aren't more sceptical people - but then some people believe in fairies.
Although I believe most top cyclists are 'doping' (my explanation of what I mean by 'doping' is too long to write out here), I still love the sport and most of the riders - why? - because pro cycling is more than a sport.
My worry is not much the doping, but whether the larger amounts of money coming into the sport will ultimately ruin the cycling.
(In a similar vein I also worry about the clamour to politicise utility cycling)
I hope you enjoy your nightmare world of doubt where everyone is guilty, and the clean can never prove it. Yet you still watch; what a maroon.
Colin, The reason I am sticking with presumption of innocence is because it is the right thing to do. Secondly if you don't do that, then that means that Evans and Wiggins and Froome are all cheats because they won. No one could win without the assumption that they are a cheat. There are plenty of people who think that already. But if that is what you think then why do you even bother to watch, what would be the point?
If you are just going to run down the field until you get to the person you think is suitable then don't run the Giro or the Tour, just hand out a price to the nicest chap in the field at least JensV would win then.
No. Schleck A. is clean until shown to be otherwise, we will waiting and see, but YOU don't get to choose. I hope that doesn't stick in your throat the next time some one you have taken against wins something.
Meanwhile Di Luca gets everything he deserves. "Foolish of him to not be more cautious" so you blame him for getting caught, not cheating in the first place. You need to get your priorities straight.
So, you'd take away Di Luca's Giro win and give it to second placed, er... Andy Schleck? Third placed Mazzoleni? Simoni? Cunego? I give up.
Yes, Andy Schleck. And that is who would keep it, why wouldn't he keep it?
You may have missed that a lot of people have decided that because Frank Schleck was caught, Andy is guilty too.
Well I am not very interested in what 'a lot of people' 'think.' Remember innocent until proven guilty. Lance's legacy cannot be that we forget about justice. It should not be that the only TDF winner that people trust is Evans, because he makes it look really hard.
Interesting you say that though since most riders who have been caught doping haven't failed a doping test. Many have been caught because others have confessed or force of circumstances - Lance being chief amongst these. Why would you choose to assume their innocence when the facts suggest that it is possible to cheat and not get caught? And that quite often the riders do still.
De Luca's point, while self serving is that he has probably been targeted for tests (out of competition tests are still relatively rare) because he is an easy score for the testers to prove. Already guilty of offences, when he is caught they can show they are effective and that no one new has had their career ruined - the anti-doping agency is seen to be doing something while doing nothing. Italians don't have a good track record on this front. Foolish of him to not be more cautious, but I have no doubt that he knows of others doping.
"Clearly I have to pay for everyone else.”
5 years ago maybe, not now danny boy
Good riddance to bad rubbish
Well you can't expect a dirty scumbag like Di Luca to go with good grace, can you?
This does show the inconsistency of sanctions; congratulations to CONI for the life ban, but why hasn't he been stripped of his results like LA?
Exactly and Shamed riders like David Millar still get to ride, profit from the inevitable sob story autobiography. The UCI/BC is a bloody joke.
Millar did his time, paid quite a heavy personal price, learned his lesson and has gone on to do something about the problem since
Not really in the same bracket as Di Luca (who should indeed be stripped of his results)
I think it's fair enough to hand out a harsher punishment to a 3x offender...
Because in Armstrong's case, he was never sanctioned during his career but USADA established a conspiracy going back at least 15 years, so his results get stripped from August 1998.
Whereas in Di Luca's case, he was sanctioned three separate times, and the rules were applied each time.
Okay, he kept the 2007 Giro, which some say he shouldn't have, but regarding the positive tests that gave rise to the subsequent two bans, he was stripped of results, but only from the date of the positive sample being taken.
The life bans aren't quite the same; it's like two prisoners serving life in the same prison, but one of them's there for a single crime that carries that sentence, the other on a three-strikes-and-life sentence such as they have for repeat violent offenders in parts of the US.
I appreciate that there are differences in the cases, but really if the offence is serious enough to warrant a lifetime ban, then it would be good to say "Okay son, all your results have been wiped from the records; it's like your sporting life never existed. Cheerio!"
Dear Dani
Read Nicole Cooke's retirement speech polemic. Then fuck off into obscurity to consider it.
Cheers,
Everybody.
“It was all already written. Clearly I have to pay for everyone else.”
Ha, no-one cares so bye bye. Meanwhile Lance squirms under his punishment because he itches to race again. Makes it the best punishment, a permanent torture. Mmm, schadenfreude, my favourite cake.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/26/how-to-make-a-schadenfreude-pie/
Dear Dani
P*** off you deluded idiot
Yours
Cycling.
So who did win a time trial at 60km/hr?!
Once is unlucky, twice is careless, thrice is stupidity!
Yay! Lance has a new riding buddy!
HAHA BRILLIANT! only because its soo true!
I've had a brilliant idea!! Have a special cycle race where drugs are encouraged to see how far the human body can go with the help of modern chemistry. Awesome idea!
Erm, those races already feature on the cycling calendar