A cycling prodigy plagued by his boss’s past scandals

When Tadej Pogačar first proved himself the most explosive and exciting young talent in professional cycling by winning the Covid-delayed Tour de France in September 2020, there was an ­inevitable degree of scepticism.

The doubts have faded, but never completely vanished. Yet the Slovenian is hard not to like. He is a genuine boy-racer who attempts the impossible and the unprecedented. Usually, he pulls it off.

Last Wednesday, he crushed the Belgian classic, Flèche Wallonne, accelerating on a 20 per cent bend to leave rivals gasping in his wake. Earlier this April, he made his debut in Paris-Roubaix, the cobbled Classic, finishing a fearless second.

Today, he rides in the Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic in the Ardennes, a race suited to his explosive climbing skills. His success rate is jaw-dropping. In 2024, he won 25 times in 58 days, taking the Giro d’Italia and Tour by huge margins.

Pogačar is self-deprecating and laudably points out gender bias in sport – like Andy Murray – by reminding the media he is not the first athlete to pull off a ground-breaking achievement if a woman did it first.

He is also loyal and committed. Last summer, he withdrew from the Paris Olympics in solidarity with his partner, fellow professional, Urška Žigart, who was inexplicably snubbed by the Slovenian national selectors.

However, doubts persist. Last summer, during the 2024 Tour de France, the Escape Collective website published a report on carbon monoxide rebreathing, used to measure effectiveness of altitude training. Both Pogačar’s UAE Emirates team and that of his main rival, Danish rider, Jonas Vingegaard, were named in it.

Both teams later admitted using the technique — now banned due to concerns of possible blood manipulation — and Pogačar, who has never failed a drugs test, denied any knowledge.

“I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m just uneducated,” he replied to my direct question. But 24 hours later, Pogačar had suddenly remembered.

“I didn’t quite understand the question,” he said. “It’s not like you’re breathing exhaust pipes in a car. It’s just a simple test to see how you respond to altitude training.”

It was a bizarre misstep, his press officer said he was “caught off-guard”. But it is not the only elephant in the room. That’s due to Pogačar’s team boss, Mauro Gianetti. The Swiss’s presence is an inconvenient truth that most in cycling choose to sweep under the carpet.

As a rider, Gianetti spent 10 days in intensive care in 1998. A Swiss judge launched an investigation (subsequently dropped) into allegations of doping, which Gianetti consistently denied. And as team manager, he has been involved in several scandals. In 2008, his team’s rising star, Riccardo Riccò, was arrested after testing positive for EPO, the blood-boosting hormone. Gianetti’s Saunier Duval team quit that year’s Tour and Riccò landed a 12-year ban.

In 2011, Gianetti and former Saunier Duval colleague, Matxin Fernández — who also works with Pogačar — ran the Geox-TMC team, led by Spaniard Juan José Cobo, who unexpectedly won the Vuelta a España at Chris Froome’s expense. In 2019, Cobo was stripped of his victory due to “irregularities in his biological passport”.

And there was a moment, in the evangelical post-Armstrong era, when Gianetti might have been exiled from cycling. Then UCI president, Brian Cookson, recalls he wanted to “clear up the mess left by the doping issues of the past”, which had put the sport into a “serious existential crisis”.

“I wanted to put in place a ‘Fit and Proper Person Test’, so those with a leading part in organised doping could be permanently excluded from holding any position in the sport,” he told the Observer. But it was stymied first because sanctions could be seen as a “double punishment” and according to World Anti-Doping Agency rules, Gianetti had “the right to be involved in a team”. So Gianetti remains at Pogačar’s side.

He should not be judged by his association. But nor should history be ignored and brains disengaged, even if cycling has a history of expedience, of sweeping the dirt under the carpet.

In 2021, Gianetti made a rare statement on his past: “It was a very different culture and mentality.”

Pogačar is favourite to win today in Liège, but to believe unquestioningly in him demands belief in Gianetti’s “road to Damascus” moment. For some, that’s a step too far.

Photograph: Fabio Ferrari, Pool/Getty Images