Mauro Santambrogio

Mauro Santambrogio
	Mauro Santambrogio at the Tour Down Under 2009
To person
Date of birth	October 7, 1984
nation	Italy
discipline	Street
doping
2013 / 2014–2017	EPO
Team (s)
2004–2005 ; 2006 ; 2007 ; 2007–2009 ; 2010–2012 ; 2013	LPR ; Lampre ; Tenax ; Lampre ; BMC Racing Team ; Vini Fantini-Selle Italia
	Last updated: October 27, 2015

Mauro Santambrogio (born October 7, 1984 in Erba ) is a former Italian cyclist .

Athletic career

Mauro Santambrogio began his professional career in 2004 with the Italian cycling team L.PR-Piacenza . The following year he took part in the UCI Europe Tour , where he won the Swiss one-day race Giro del Lago Maggiore . In 2006 Santambrogio switched to the Italian ProTeam Lampre , in whose service he - after a short detour to Team Tenax - was again until the end of 2009. Between 2010 and 2012 Santambrogio drove for the BMC Racing Team .

In 2008 he finished his first three-week tour of the country with the Vuelta a España . Although he only finished 121st overall, he was able to draw attention to himself with sixth place in the mass sprint of the final stage . Santambrogio made his Tour de France debut in 2009.

His greatest success was in 2013 when he won a mountain finish at the Giro d'Italia in extremely poor weather conditions before Vincenzo Nibali . He finished the tour in ninth place overall. On June 3, 2013, however, it was announced that he had tested positive for the doping agent EPO on the first stage of the Giro d'Italia . It was the second doping case of his team Vini Fantini-Selle Italia during the tour of Italy to Danilo di Luca . In October 2013, he stated that he had toyed with the idea of killing himself. Only the reaction to his farewell tweet on Twitter stopped him. After he worked with the Cycling Independent Reform Commission , initiated by the new UCI President Brian Cookson in 2013 , he received an 18-month suspension that ran until November 2, 2014 instead of one possible four-year ban.

On October 22, 2014, a few days before his suspension expired, Santambrogio tested positive for testosterone . He explained that the preparation was used to treat erectile dysfunction and that he had informed the UCI about this. In October 2015 he was banned for three years retrospectively from October 2014; then he announced his retirement from elite cycling.