Cycling: Revelations about the troubled past of Mauro Gianetti, Tadej Pogacar's manager

It's a safe bet that his lean figure and smooth skull will be seen at the finish of key stages of the next Tour de France. Its star rider, Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, is the overwhelming favorite for the 2025 edition, which will start in Lille on Saturday, July 5. He has already won the Tour de France three times.

What a revenge for the Swiss Mauro Gianetti, the "comeback", the "miracle"! The UAE Emirates team, of which he is the general manager, is crushing the competition: nearly 20,000 points in the UCI (International Cycling Union) ranking at the start of summer, or 7 000 more than the second, Lidl-Trek. The first French team, Décathlon AG2R la Mondiale is far, very far behind, with 6 000 points.*

Is it this staggering gap that explains the suspicion against him? "As long as he's there, the image of cycling won't change," we hear in the French teams. "How can we be credible in the fight against doping when we employ as managers people whose entire careers have been tarnished by doping?" says the former doctor of the Française des Jeux, Gérard Guillaume (1999-2016), known for not mincing his words.

Yet, since Mauro Gianetti took over as head of the UAE team in 2017, he has not been accused of any doping, directly or indirectly. But his past as a professional cyclist and the scandals that surrounded him remain a constant feature of his life. The investigation by Radio France's investigative unit sheds new light: Mauro Gianetti worked to keep witnesses to his misdeeds from speaking out.

Back to the end of the 1980s. The Swiss rider rode for Helvetia, the team of the famous Paul Köchli, who won two Tours de France with Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond when he was sporting director of Vie Claire. "Paul Köchli was vigorously against doping," emphasizes the journalist of Le Temps Pierre Carrey, a cycling specialist. "At the time, he saw in Mauro Gianetti someone of value, who believed like him in the benefits of preparation and sports science." "Mauro had difficulty breaking out at the highest level but he was a rider who performed consistently," recalls a former teammate, the Frenchman Gilles Delion. "He knew how to position himself well. He had a great pedal stroke." But his results remained modest: 5th in the world championships in 1988, 1st in the Coppa Placci (between Imola and San Marino) and Milan-Turin in 1990.

At the end of 1994, as retirement age was almost upon us, Mauro Gianetti signed with the Italian team Polti alongside Éric Boyer, who would become manager of Cofidis a decade later. "He and I were passionate about cycling, so obviously we wanted to prolong our careers," recalls the Frenchman. "At Polti, we earned the equivalent of the minimum wage. But we dreamed of bouncing back and winning races." The two men would not have the same trajectory in 1995. Éric Boyer retired during the Liège-Bastogne-Liège and ended his career. Mauro Gianetti won the race hands down, outclassing his rivals.

A week later, the Swiss won the Amstel Gold Race . "He, who had just spent ten years with a virtually blank record, started winning two major races on the calendar in eight days, races known to be very difficult," comments Éric Boyer. In Ticino, in Italian-speaking Switzerland, where Mauro Gianetti is from, the bells are ringing for the hero's return.

But suspicion hovers over this exceptional double. "In 1995, the whole world of cycling changed," explains journalist Pierre Carrey. "The last teams that hadn't touched EPO** started using it. And we see individual careers change completely." Mauro Gianetti's career had indeed exploded. The following year, he finished second in the world championships in Lugano. He left Polti for the newly formed French team, Française des Jeux.

Then came the "incident" at the Tour de Romandie in Switzerland, which Mauro Gianetti would so much like to forget. On May 8, 1998, during the third stage of this important race, considered the antechamber to the Giro (Tour of Italy), he suffered a spectacular collapse in the middle of the ascent of the Col des Planches. Initially hospitalized at the Martigny hospital, in the canton of Valais, he was transferred to the Lausanne University Hospital due to the seriousness of his condition: his vital organs were affected, and doctors suspected toxic shock linked to staphylococcus. They placed him in an induced coma and managed to save him.

When he left the hospital twelve days later, a true miracle, Mauro Gianetti explained to the press that he had suffered an "allergy" that had caused "a respiratory tract infection." At the Lausanne University Hospital, no one was fooled. In order to receive treatment, the Swiss cyclist had to confess to doctors what had preceded his impressive illness: no toxic shock, but an intravenous injection of perfluorocarbon (or PFC). This confession is included in his medical file. PFC is a blood substitute that can improve oxygen transport in the body. Since it is not soluble in blood, the Swiss diluted it with lecithin (an emulsifier), according to information obtained by the investigation unit of Radio France . "It's an extremely dangerous gesture," comments a medical source.

In July 1998, just as the Festina affair had just broken out in France, two doctors from the Lausanne University Hospital decided to file a complaint against unknown persons. They had not directly treated Mauro Gianetti, and were therefore not bound by medical confidentiality. Subsequently, the Swiss courts opened an investigation for "serious bodily harm" and "endangering the lives of others."

The investigating judge seized the medical file and blood samples taken from Mauro Gianetti. The cantonal doctor, who serves as the health authority in Switzerland, authorized the lifting of medical confidentiality so that all these elements could be used by the courts. "This person had suffered a serious systemic illness. It wasn't a fall or a sprained ankle! This concerned us," recalls cantonal doctor Jean Martin, now retired. "The courts needed to be able to carry out further investigations."

Mauro Gianetti doesn't see it that way. Through his lawyers, he filed an appeal against the lifting of medical confidentiality before the administrative court of the canton of Vaud. The latter ruled in his favor, much to the regret of Nicolas Cruchet, the investigating judge in charge of the investigation. "From the moment Mauro Gianetti learned that there was a criminal investigation, he invoked medical confidentiality to oppose any investigative measures," recalls the magistrate, whom we met in Lausanne, where he is now a prosecutor. The administrative court's decision to maintain medical confidentiality "completely blocked and paralyzed the investigation."

Mauro Gianetti pulled out all the stops to keep the source of his discomfort secret. He requested victim status in the ongoing proceedings, which would have given him access to the case file and witness statements. He was ultimately dismissed in April 1999 by the Swiss Federal Court, the highest Swiss court. "Clearly, his approach was aimed at allowing him to intervene as a party to the criminal proceedings, not for the purpose intended by the legislature, but to better control the proceedings or even thwart them," reads the particularly firm-toned decision of the Federal Court, which the Radio France investigation unit was able to consult . "There was a desire on his part to cover things up. Clearly, he wanted to get involved in the proceedings to find out who had testified against him," explains a judicial source.

Mauro Gianetti didn't stop there. He also sued the two doctors from Lausanne University Hospital who had filed a complaint for suspected doping. In November 1998, after the newspaper Le Monde revealed that he had taken PFC during the Tour de Romandie, he sent payment orders of three million Swiss francs to Dr. Gérald Grémion and 900,000 Swiss francs to Dr. Jean-Pierre Randin.

This type of lawsuit – a specific feature of Swiss law – allows you to claim damages from an individual when you feel you have been wronged. "It's something that was commonly used to put pressure on people," says Dr. Grémion, who was at the time head of the sports medicine department at the University Hospital, nearly three decades later. "The problem is that these payment orders remain registered with the Office of Prosecutions. And when you apply for a bank loan, it appears in your file at the bank."

And so it was that in 2003, when Dr. Grémion wanted to buy a home, the bank refused him the loan because it considered he owed Mauro Gianetti three million Swiss francs. "This whole thing made their lives hell," says a former colleague of the two doctors. To unlock the bank loan, Dr. Grémion was forced to negotiate with Mauro Gianetti's lawyer to get him to agree to drop the lawsuits.

"In exchange, I had to promise never to speak publicly about this person again, and I'm sticking to that," he explains, without mentioning Gianetti's name. "You could say my silence was bought. That's the privilege of certain people who have a certain amount of power. They have the ability to silence anyone, any way they can."

Mauro Gianetti's lawyer, Tuto Rossi, declined to answer our questions. But according to our information, in a letter he sent to Gérald Grémion's lawyer on May 15, 2003, he effectively made the lifting of the proceedings conditional on the doctor's silence in this case.

Due to the failure to lift medical confidentiality, Judge Cruchet's investigation ended in a dismissal in 2002. The origin of the PFC used by Mauro Gianetti could therefore not be determined. At that time, the product was not commercially available but was undergoing clinical trials in hospitals where it was considered as a potential treatment for anemia and hemorrhages.

But because of its dangerousness, PFC never obtained marketing authorization, reveals biologist Gérard Dine, who was conducting trials on blood substitutes at Troyes hospital. "We were in the middle of an experiment," confides Professor Dine, who was interviewed by the UCI after Mauro Gianetti's illness. "The fact that PFC was already in the peloton was a big surprise to me. Above all, it's a huge risk. It's like playing sorcerer's apprentice."

Even those who have always supported the UAE manager throughout his career say they are amazed. "From what I knew, he was clean when he was a rider with us at Helvetia," recalls his former teammate Gilles Delion. "Then, he was caught up in the atmosphere of the time. Now, we've moved on to a higher level, we're no longer caught up in doping but we're becoming pioneers. It's a little more vicious. It was about getting the product that others didn't have," says the former professional rider, known for his frankness. "It didn't match the Mauro I knew at the time."

Contacted several times, Mauro Gianetti did not respond to questions from Radio France's investigative unit. The UAE Emirates team's press officer, whom we met on the sidelines of the Critérium du Dauphiné in mid-June, declined to comment on our investigation, referring us to Mauro Gianetti.

Marc Madiot, the head of the French Games team since its creation, also declined to comment on his former rider, nor on any knowledge he may have had of doping practices within his squad. "I was questioned in 1998 as part of the investigation opened in Switzerland. I answered all the questions from the judicial authorities, and no action was taken. Nothing was held against me personally, nor against the cycling team I led," he told us.

At the end of 1998, Mauro Gianetti was forced to leave Française des Jeux. He ended his racing career in more modest teams, without repeating his past performances. He bounced back into management in the early 2000s, first in Italy, then in 2004, he was appointed sports director of the Spanish team Saunier-Duval. "As team boss, he will try to achieve the dream that was unattainable for him as a rider: winning the Tour de France. It's his obsession," explains journalist Pierre Carrey. "Gianetti plays with fire. He seeks out riders who are extremely talented but extremely risky. These are old stars that he will revive, but by what process? He also brings in young riders with long, very long ambitions."

The rest is history: during the 2008 Tour de France, one of the stars of the Saunier Duval team, the Italian Riccardo Ricco, nicknamed "the Cobra," tested positive for third-generation EPO. He was excluded from the race, and the team was forced to leave the Tour amid widespread disgrace.

Scalded by this affair, sponsor Saunier-Duval withdrew from cycling. "Afterwards, Mauro Gianetti was shocked by the trajectory of his own rider," recalls Pierre Carrey. The Swiss rider was never directly implicated in this affair, but at the time, Tour de France boss Christian Prudhomme told the press that Mauro Gianetti "is not a paragon of virtue."

Almost no one would venture such a comment today. Manager of UAE Emirates since 2017, Mauro Gianetti leads a team with an estimated annual budget of between €55 and €60 million. It's the richest team in the peloton. It benefits from major and solid sponsors: the government of the United Arab Emirates and Emirates Airline, among others.

Above all, it has the best cyclist in the world, Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, in its squad. "Today, Mauro Gianetti no longer bothers many people among the cycling greats, in sporting and economic circles, in cycling authorities, and among the organizers of the Tour de France," says Pierre Carrey. "Pogacar wins a lot of races, Gianetti has the new Merckx in his hands. He has become completely untouchable."

Untouchable perhaps. But clearly also very concerned about what is said about him. Last April, the specialist website Escape Collective revealed that Mauro Gianetti's English Wikipedia page was edited 17 times between 2008 and 2015. Each time, the paragraph titled "doping affair" from the Tour de Romandie was deleted. Wikipedia teams reinstated it, but it was deleted again. Escape Collective was able to locate the origin of these edits thanks to the IP addresses of the two contributors in question. They came from Spain, where the Saunier Duval team was headquartered, and from southeastern Switzerland, where Gianetti lives. At the same time, flattering information was added to the same Wikipedia page.

"These are very specific details, which cannot be known even by the most ardent fans of Mauro Giannetti," explains Iain Treloar, the journalist who authored the investigation, contacted in Australia where he lives. "For example, it was written that he received honorary citizenship of the town of Fatoma in Mali in 2008. That he was named non-smoker of the year 1997 in Switzerland. And that he was made a knight of honor by the Swiss master bakers in 1996." The situation is all the more strange because these details "were written in the first person. Instead of reading 'Mauro Giannetti did this' it read: 'I did this'," continues Iain Treloar. Questioned by Escape Collective, a spokesperson for UAE Emirates denies this and affirms that Mauro Gianetti did not edit his Wikipedia page himself. Which has since regained a more neutral and objective content.

* 2025 UCI World Tour Team Ranking as of June 24, 2025

**EPO, for erythropoietin, is a hormone that helps improve the transport of oxygen in the blood

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