« I have never doped in my life and, above all, I never thought about it, ”Vicenzo Nibali has always said it and still repeats it about doping cases. A subject that The Italian spoke this Saturday during an interview with the Corre Della will be.
Winner of the Tour de France in 2014, Nibali, retired since 2022, first spoke about his media exhibition which he lived badly: “I was overwhelmed, crushed by popularity, requests, fans and journalists. When we walked with the baby in the stroller, they attacked us. With my wife, we just wanted to flee everything and everyone. Then we got used to it, but it was not by stopping the competition that I really started to live. »»
The runner who also won a Vuelta (2010), two Giro (2013 and 2016), the Tour de Lombardie in 2015 and 2017 as well as Milan-San Remo in 2018 also spoke about suspicions of doping about him, continuing to explain that he never used this during his career: “I won, I was Italian and the boss of my team, Vinokourov, had an ambiguous past. I was followed, they searched my car and checked my phone, and I’m sure they also searched my house to find evidence that did not exist, he says. Cyclists were easy targets. I have never doped in my life and, above all, I never thought about it. They have checked me a million times, they can test test pieces in 100 years. Head high, always. »»
Doping cases which certainly cost him victories for those who evolved within the Astana training from 2013 to 2016: “I have never wondered how many times I had lost because of doping, probably a lot. On the Vuelta 2010, I was in the fight with Spanish [Ezequiel] Mosquera (finally 2nd of the general behind Nibali, editor’s note), then radiated. What if it was he who had won and that we had never discovered that he was doped? »»
