The homes of Marco Velo (Quick Step), Riccardo Chiarini (De Rosa), Marco Corti (Footon Servetto) and Raffaele Ferrara (Carmiooro) have been searched. It doesn't sound good, right?

You may remember that a squad, Lucchini-Unidelta team, were excluded from the Girobio (Baby Giro) earlier this month. It is this event that the Italian police are working with. During the race the police found banned substances and medicines for which there were no prescriptions after a raid of team's director Bruno Leali's house, the team's hotel and training base. It is quite appalling that the kind of doping exists in amateur cycling. Thankfully they seem to be an exception.

Yesterday the police also carried out raids on the homes of five of the six Lucchini riders excluded from GiroBio, an unnamed mountain bike rider, a female professional (Francesca Faustini), but also some footballer from Genoa’s youth system, the Italian news paper, La Gazzetta dello Sport, wrote.