'No one cheated' says Malagò

(ANSA) - Rome, December 3 - Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) President Giovanni Malagò on Thursday defended 26 Italian athletes cited by an anti-doping body, saying ban requests against them were "just a formality".
    The two-year ban requests for 26 athletes "have caused a lot of confusion," Malago said.
    "The anti-doping organisation's citations were a formality and only for 2009-2012...these lads did not cheat". Malagò said the case concerned faulty "communications of presence", and did not mean the athletes were actively eluding drug tests. He said the Italian athletics federation "is not only in the clear but in certain respects it is a victim". "This is not a doping case," he added. "A doping case is the one in Russia, what we have here (in Italy) is an issue of procedures that were not formally respected".
    What it boils down to, he said, is the 26 athletes failed to fill out the paperwork correctly. The National Anti-Doping Organisation NADO on Wednesday asked that the 26 Italian athletics competitors be banned for two years for dodging tests. The athletes named included sprinter Simone Collio, middle-distance runner Andrea Lalli, triple jumper Fabrizio Donato, retired former pole-vault world champ Giuseppe Gibilisco, triple jumper Daniele Greco and long jumper Andrew Howe. The requests came after NADO assessed a probe by Carabinieri in the northern Italian towns of Trento and Bolzano.
    The full list of the athletes involved is: Roberto BERTOLINI; Migidio BOURIFA; Filippo CAMPIOLI; Simone COLLIO; Roberto DONATI; Fabrizio DONATO; Giovanni FALOCI; Matteo GALVAN; Giuseppe GIBILISCO; Daniele GRECO; Andrew HOWE; Anna INCERTI; Andrea LALLI; Stefano LA ROSA; Claudio LICCIARDELLO; Daniele MEUCCI; Christian OBRIST; Ruggero PERTILE; Jacques RIPARELLI; Silvia SALIS; Fabrizio SCHEMBRI; Daniele SECCI; Kaddour SLIMANI; Gianluca TAMBERI; Marco Francesco VISTALLI; Silvia WEISSTEINER.