The move by Italian authorities comes near the end of this year's race, originally scheduled to finish in Milan on Sunday. And just last week police seized numerous products, both marked and unmarked, from a camper belonging to a family member of two-time Giro winner Ivan Gotti who currently rides for the Alessio team. The raid, the biggest crackdown on banned performance-enhancing drugs since the 1998 Tour de France, came as a surprise. Up to 400 Italian police officers searched rooms of riders of all 20 teams in hotels around the town of San Remo on the Italian Riviera. Evidently the sudden visit was completely unexpected, and quickly took debacle-like proportions as eyewitnesses said that objects were being thrown from some hotel windows, and at least one rider was seen trying to crawl out through his hotel window.
Police confirm that they found syringes on the grounds around certain hotels.
According to ANSA, an Italian news agency, police sources say that substances including testosterone, caffeine, adrenal, anabolic steroids and other stimulants were found, as well as unlabelled medical bottles and vials of blood. Meanwhile, Pantani, who was expelled from the 1999 Giro after failing a blood test, has been suffering from influenza and announced he would not start Thursday's stage. Thursday's mountainous 230-kilometer stage from Imperia to Sant' Anna di Vinadio in the Alpes promised to be crucial to the outcome of the race, since only 15 seconds separates Gilberto Simoni and Dario Frigo from the race lead. But instead of racing on Thursday, the riders held an emergency meeting to decide the fate of the race. Many riders, outraged by their treatment, quite simply wanted to call off the rest of the race.