You find strange the fact that an entire population doesn't match your stereotype based on the behaviour of a royal family? You understand that not only greed and desire to exploit minorities moved European (including Italian) explorers to foreign lands but also a genuine scientific interest? Whether this interest was funded and used for colonial purposes is another story, but there were plenty of men just spending and risking their life to learn obscure languages and cultures. By the way, this was the same interest that made anthropologists and ethnographers start studying rural populations from their own country. Ethnic museums in Italy are full of material from both Italian regions and overseas territories. Even if you wanted to label all of these people under the racist category (and you could do it to an extent), it shouldn't be surprising that people wanted to learn and understand different kinds of humans.

As far as I know (not much in fact) the will has been disputed, but my point here is that it's baseless to claim Columbus was Italian, when we at most can attest his birthplace (and even "Genova" could be both the city and the Republic of Genoa, so there are different cities in Liguria who claim to be his birthplace) But my point is that he basically lived his whole life in the Iberian peninsula, and never really gave any hints about being part of a different nationality. Also "nations" and national identity can't be intended in the modern sense here. Another thing is that, in his will he calls himself Colon not Colombo, as the Genoese theory claims his name should be. I think that's still a valid hypothesis, but it's far from being a historical proven fact.

There has been almost zero evidence for that. No reason to claim otherwise. He himself never said he was Italian, or rather Genoese, he wrote countless of letters and diaries but never a word in Italian.

I guess you never heard about the Roman empire.

Doping is still present in cycling but it's become extremely difficult to escape the antidoping agency in the last 5-10 years especially for the top pro cyclists, and those who get caught or miss a test are heavily sanctioned. Pro cyclists are absolutely the most controlled athletes in the world right now. The amateur and lower level though are probably where the most illegal activities happen, but anyway you can only know the ones who get caught. The impression, as someone who regularly follows the sport, is that it's a lot less convenient today for the top pro riders than it was 15-20 years ago, at the top of the EPO and nandrolone "pandemic". Incidentally, one of the effects is probably the huge leap in technological advancements we have witnessed in the last 10 years in cycling, both on equipment and training methods. Teams and cyclists are investing a lot into anything that can improve their performances other than doping. Obviously it's impossible to say it's not existent anymore, but the system that made doping so prevalent between the 90s and 2010s probably doesn't exist anymore, and those who still choose to rely on illegal substances or methods are doing it on their own. Here's a list of all the doping cases ever in cycling so you can get the idea.