Cycling team cuts rider after biological passport doping case

The Unibet Rose Rockets team terminated the contract of Italian rider Giovanni Carboni following his provisional doping suspension by the UCI for abnormalities detected in his athlete’s biological passport, the team confirmed this weekend.

Carboni was provisionally suspended in September after the UCI flagged unexplained irregularities in passport data dating to 2024, before he arrived at the second-tier Rockets in 2025.

The team said it opened an internal review upon notification and decided to terminate the 29-year-old Italian as it prepares for a high-profile 2026 season with the arrival of WorldTour-level pros.

“After careful consideration, we have decided to terminate our collaboration with Giovanni Carboni early,” a team statement read. “The decision follows notification received on September 11, 2025, regarding a provisional suspension issued by the UCI for facts pending investigation prior to his arrival on our team on January 1, 2025. Upon receiving this information, we initiated a dialogue with the rider.”

The team’s move comes as management is building for 2026 and an outside shot at a Tour de France wild card invitation. The team’s signed several WorldTour-level riders, including Dylan Groenewegen, Wout Poels, and Victor Lafay.

Carboni joined the Rockets for 2025 after stints with Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè, where he briefly wore the white jersey and sat second overall at the 2019 Giro d’Italia.

His final race for the Rockets was GP Industria & Artigianato in September just before the UCI cited him with a provisional ban.

There was no immediate response from Carboni.

Carboni case is latest high-profile APB suspension

Carboni’s exit is the latest involving an athlete’s biological passport data, which remains somewhat of a grey zone in anti-doping efforts.

As Velo reported last month, sources say many teams are no longer reviewing passport data and medical records as rigorously as they once did during recruitment, apparently leaning more on oversight by the UCI and ITA.

The Carboni decision comes on the heels of the big-name provisional suspension of Oier Lazkano, the Spanish WorldTour pro with Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe, which he joined in 2025.

The UCI flagged abnormalities in his athlete’s biological passport covering the 2022–2024 period when he was racing with Team Movistar.

Both Movistar and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have since moved to distance themselves from the rider, who has publicly denied any wrongdoing as the proceedings continue.

Red Bull boss Ralph Denk spoke briefly about the Lazkano case at the team’s recent camp.

“It is a pending case. It was not in our time, but in the time of Movistar,” Denk said. “We acted accordingly, but as long as the case is not closed, I cannot say anything more.”