You’ve probably never heard of Enrico Della Casa, and almost certainly don’t know what he looks like, but the Italian-Swiss is about to have his status as one of cycling’s most powerful men of the 2020s reinforced – and if events later this month turn out how cycling’s governors want and David Lappartient is elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Della Casa, the white-haired powerbroker fans know so little about, could be set to become the most powerful and influential man in cycling, with just about everyone in the know assuming he’d replace Lappartient as the International Cycling Union's (UCI) president. “We’re all waiting for March 20,” he anxiously says.
First, though, on March 9, Della Casa is running unopposed to be reelected for the second time as the president of the European Cycling Union (UEC), a collection of 51 nations that organises various European Championships and represents the continent at the UCI. The 58-year-old speaker of five languages has worked in various capacities at the UEC since 2005, but it’s inside the UCI’s meeting rooms where he has become most prominent, sitting as one of two UCI vice-presidents and president of the governing body’s track commission since September 2021. In the corridors of influence, Della Casa wields enormous power.
But it was never – unlike his ally and mentor, the career-driven politician Lappartient – really the plan; he stumbled into it by virtue of having his foot in the door and his face fitting. In September 1998 at the age of 31, having spent most of his 20s working in the banking sector, Della Casa took up position as the UCI's anti-doping logistics coordinator – just a month after the infamous Festina affair that shook sport to its core. “It was a hurricane in cycling at that time and I didn’t want to join the UCI, but after six months they convinced me,” he tells Rouleur by video from the UEC’s offices in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Della Casa’s job was essentially logistics management. “I was the liaison between the organiser and the doping control officers, and worked with the UCI lawyers and doctors who were in charge of analysing results,” he says. “I don’t want to say we were at the beginning of anti-doping control but we were like pioneers. It was the UCI in February 1999 who pushed the IOC to create WADA.”
Of course, during Della Casa’s four year tenure with the UCI’s anti-doping operations, Lance Armstrong and US Postal were systemically doping to win the Tour de France, and a UCI-instigated report from 2015 later accused the governing body of colluding with Armstrong to cover up his malpractice, starting in 1999 when Armstrong tested positive for cortisone. “It was a hard time, and it’s easy to say we were the only sport that had doping, but in my opinion that’s not correct: we were doing more than 5,000 tests per year, and that wasn’t the case with other sporting federations,” Della Casa says. “I am proud that cycling did a great job in terms of anti-doping, and now the credibility of cycling is completely different to 25 years ago. I’m not sure other sports can say they’ve done as much as cycling has.”
Friendly, smiling, and engaging, Della Casa moved to the track cycling department of the UCI in 2001, the discipline he most practised in his youth, and 24 years on he is now the biggest voice in velodrome cycling. “About 20 percent of my work is dedicated to my UCI commitments,” he says. The rest of the time he’s heading up the UEC and organising continental championships, including the multi-sport European Championships. “We’re here to serve our national federations… and develop cycling for children, because we need to put kids on bikes.” In 2013, when Lappartient was reelected as the UEC president, Della Casa was the Frenchman's director general, and the duo, he says, “reshaped the UEC completely. It was an empty box, but now it’s an internationally recognised federation and a European Olympic Committee partner.”
Della Casa's mentor David Lappartient could be named the next IOC president on March 20 (Photo: SWPix)
It’s difficult to separate Della Casa’s career path from Lappartient’s, and the man Lappartient superseded as the sport’s president in 2017, Briton Brian Cookson, told Rouleur that while he is sure Della Casa would “certainly be competent” in the top role, the Swiss-Italian “has hitched his wagon to Lappartient’s TGV”. Many others have similarly presumed he will be hand-picked as Lappartient’s eventual successor. “I work very well with David and we’re able to coordinate movements together without any problems,” Della Casa says. “My relationship with the UCI is extremely good.”
Should Della Casa be promoted to the UCI throne, whether this year or in 2029, there are three priorities he’d concentrate on: safety, women’s cycling and the environment. “Safety is our main concern at the moment,” he says. “We need to work a lot on that because we’re losing a lot of kids. I have three children and sending them out onto the road to train is difficult – I am very scared by the current situation, and people driving faster and faster and using mobile phones.” His election manifesto highlights how the UEC award equal prize money to men and women, and as women’s cycling “continues to develop and grow very well”, Della Casa is focused on reforming a calendar which is getting “more and more busy”, a move that goes hand-in-hand with the need for the sport to become more sustainable. “Last year, the women competed in Strade Bianche and then went to the Netherlands and back to Italy – we have to find solutions to avoid extra costs for tests and to improve the carbon footprint,” he says. “We need more electrical cars in the peloton, and to reduce the number of team cars following events.”
Despite all the overlaps and shared ambitions, Della Casa does try to draw a line between himself and Lappartient. “David is more linked to politics, and I’m more linked to operations,” he says. That said, one moment he says, “our position is quite clear” in reference to the Ukraine war and continued exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes (which Lapparient has vowed to revoke should he become IOC president), and the next he says, “I personally never enter the discussion of politics.” But take cycling’s top job and he’ll have to; when you’re the head of an international governing body, politics and sports are intertwined.
“In Italy we don’t like to speak about the future when we have elections,” he says, a successful attempt at playing a straight bat. “Therefore I am standing to be a UEC president, and we are all supporting David Lappartient to be the IOC president, because having an IOC president coming from the cycling world would mean our sport having visibility which would be a very good opportunity for us.” Should it happen – and most IOC observers rate Lappartient as having a strong chance – Della Casa will be waiting in the wings. “After March 20 we can have another chat,” he teases, “and then with pleasure I’ll let you know my thoughts.”
