Team Sky has decided to suspend its rider Gianni Moscon from racing. According to a written warning, the British team, Team Sky suspends the Italian rider for six weeks after the racist incident during last week’s Tour de Romandie race.
According to other riders and spectators of the tour, Moscon, 23, did use racially abusive language to Kevin Reza from FDJ. This episode happened during the end of the third stage, back on Friday. Even though Moscon did apologize to his colleague later on, Team Sky couldn’t let this event pass without a consequence for the Italian cyclist.
According to Team Sky’s declaration, the fight the two cyclists were involved in was quite big and it left Kevin hurt. They also added that Moscon was the one to go to FDJ and apologize to Kevin. Now they know Team Sky takes these matters very seriously.
Team Sky’s Nicolas Portal also added: “I don’t want to comment (on what Moscon said) but it wasn’t nice. If Kevin wants to comment then he will. It was a big incident for us and for him and we treated it.”
Gianni Moscon – https://t.co/7B7HS3SiA2
— Team Sky ? (@TeamSky) May 1, 2017
Not the first time…
The truth is, this is not the first case when a professional rider has been punished for different racist insults. During the Tour de France in 2014, Reza was the one to accuse cyclists Michael Albasini from Orica cycling team using harsh racist language on him.
His team Orica didn’t get any measures at the time declaring they had already solved their issue and have shaken their hands. According to them, no further drama was needed…
Also, a year later, in 2015, cyclists Branislau Samoilau got several accusations of being quite abusive toward Qhubeka’s Natnael Berhane from the MTN team. Samoilau had to give one month’s wages by the CCC Polsat team, which they donated them to the Qhubeka charity.
The official declaration Nocilas Portal, Team Sky’s directeur gave for Cyclingnews after the Romandie’s incident was: “There was a big fight at the finish and, yes, it hurt Kevin. After the stage Gianni apologized. We went to see FDJ this morning to make the effort so they know we take it seriously. Kevin accepted and that was nice that the two guys could shake hands and that there was an apology. There’s no excuse for that but we moved on,” added Portal.
“This is something we’re going to take seriously after the race. In this sport we have all generations of bike riders and some really young bike riders. It’s our job to teach them the right way, we’ve seen really bad behavior in other sports, and this is really bad. We explained this to Gianni and he understood.”
