Milan Erzen / Slovenian Cycling

[BlueRoads]

For some time now I have tried to avoid making accusations against Slovenian cycling, then broken with my own plans. Now, seeing how we are still discussing Armstrong and Ineos passionately, but not really what's happening with Slovenia right now, I felt the need to open up this thread.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/bahrain-manager-milan-erzen-denies-links-to-aderlass-doctor/

No hard facts to be seen anywhere, just weird circumstances and a few contradictions.

 

[samhocking]

Certainly Nibali & his agent Carera worked very closely with Erzen & Prince Bahrain in order for Bahrain-Merida to happen and Erzen & Carera are said to be good friends too. Of the riders mixed up in Aderlass I think Hondo, Petacchi , Koren, Đurasek, Božič are all Carera's riders and the 3 Aderlass-caught Slovenian riders were introduced to Carera/Liquigas by Erzen who all ended up at Bahrain with Nibali. Certainly a very tight little group of riders, agents in the same team, but doesn't mean much as that's how agents work, but just an observation and my immediate thoughts there is a thread connecting between them all and Schmidt via Erzen, Carera & Liquigas.
Big doping problems in Bahrain's athletes too the last few years. Well over 50% of them with doping violations at the top level last few years and I would assume mostly funded similarly to Bahrain-Merida politically-speaking.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Erzen also signed Roglic to Adria Mobil back in the day and Jani became the u23 ITT WC when he was riding for him (later he seemed to be one of Johan's favourite riders), so it's not just the Carrera-Bahrain connection. Durasek also raced for his team before he signed with Lampre (and got busted in the whole Operation Aderlass investigation).
Adria Mobil always seemed to be a CT team like many others, not super clean, but not super shady (ecen if they often had the older guys who only performed at CT level, but you can say the same about many other CT teams). Still, Milan is one of the key figures when it comes to the rise of Slovenian cycling and with the scene being pretty small it is understandable that people wonder what the implications might be for Slovenian cycling in general.