Nibali: The news about Di Luca is very bad

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) has praised the organisers of the Giro d'Italia for cancelling stage 19 of the race due to bad weather. He also described Danilo Di Luca's positive test for EPO as 'bad news'.

Nibali and his teammates travelled by bus to their hotel close to Val Martello after stage 19 of the race was cancelled due to bad weather two hours before the scheduled start.

Despite the roads being dry, the Giro d'Italia race leader and his Astana teammates opted to ride on the rollers in the hotel garage. With music blasting from an Ipod, the roller session was more like a spinning class than a stage of the Giro d'Italia.

Before jumping on his bike, Nibali spoke briefly in a video prepared by the Astana press officer Chris Baldwin.

"I think the organisers made an important decision," he said.

"They'd already changed the stage but because of the weather conditions and the snow, we can't do the stage. The conditions are really extreme and so I think they've made the right decision."

Nibali raced with Di Luca at Liquigas but was critical of his fellow Italian after it was announced that he had tested positive for EPO.

"The news about Danilo Di Luca is very bad news because it's always us, the riders, who pay the price for things like this," he said.

"This kind of thing is never good news for the world of cycling and is something we never like to hear. We'll see what happens. I think there are representatives bodies like the Italian Association of Professional rider, who I think will take action for this kind of thing."

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Stephen Farrand
Head of News

Stephen is the most experienced member of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. He has been Head of News at Cyclingnews since 2022, before which he held the position of European editor since 2012 and previously worked for Reuters, Shift Active Media, and CyclingWeekly, among other publications.