Contador suspended, doping charges rock cycling

GEELONG, Australia, (Reuters) – Tour de France  winner Alberto Contador and the Tour of Spain runner-up Ezequiel  Mosquera were suspended for suspected doping yesterday in a  devastating blow to cycling’s battered image.

The suspensions set back the sport’s efforts to restore its  credibility after a string of high-profile drugs cases.
“It tugged at my heartstring when I heard the news (about   Contador). Such scandals don’t do the sport any good. Especially  for the sponsors, who try to avoid such bad publicity,” Francis  Lafargue, head of communications at Team Caisse d’Epargne, told  Reuters.

Contador, one of the biggest names in cycling, tested  positive for a “very small concentration” of a banned anabolic  agent and was provisionally suspended, the sport’s governing  body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), said.   It added in a statement that the Spaniard, who won his third  Tour this year, was tested during the second rest day of the  highest profile race in the cycling calendar. Contador, regarded as one of the sport’s greatest ever  riders, vehemently denied doping, telling a news conference that  contaminated meat was to blame for the positive result.

Shortly afterwards, the UCI revealed that Mosquera, second  in another of the sport’s blue riband races, the Tour of Spain,  had also tested for a banned substance which helps increase  blood volume delivering oxygen to the body.
His Xacobeo team mate and fellow-Spaniard, David Garcia Da  Pena, failed a test for the same substance, hydroxyethyl starch,  the UCI said.

Contador’s news, however, was by far the bigger blow to  cycling and its most famous race, with a second B test  confirming the presence of clenbuterol, a banned steroid.  “The rider, who had already put an end to his cycling season  before the result was known, was nevertheless formally and  provisionally suspended as is prescribed by the World  Anti-Doping Code,” the UCI statement said.

Contador, who is leaving Astana to join Bjarne Riis’s Saxo  Bank team next season said he was “sad and disappointed” and the  case was “a genuine mistake”.

“It’s such a small quantity that it’s impossible to ingest  or administer to yourself and in terms of performance, it  doesn’t help at all,” he said.

“I won’t allow something like this to ruin everything. It  won’t be easy but I don’t think it will affect me.”
Saxo Bank said in a statement: “It is Riis Cycling’s hope  that this case can be resolved in a orderly and timely fashion  as it is in the best interests of all parties involved that the  proper conclusions are drawn within a reasonable period of time.

“The team has had and will continue to have the position  that cheating of any form will not be tolerated.”

Clenbuterol can be abused by athletes to strip fat and  enhance muscle size and can have short-term stimulant effects  including increasing aerobic capacity, blood pressure and  alertness. It has led to bans for cyclists in the past.

The concentration in Contador’s A test was “400 time(s) less  than what the antidoping laboratories accredited by (World  Anti-Doping Agency) WADA must be able to detect,” the UCI said  in a statement.

“In view of this very small concentration and in  consultation with WADA, the UCI immediately had the proper  results management proceedings conducted including the analysis  of B sample that confirmed the first result.”

The case would require “further scientific investigation”  before any conclusion could be drawn and could take some time,  the statement added. On a dark day for world cycling, a source close to an  investigation in Italy said police found 50 unidentified tablets  at the home of Italian cyclist Riccardo Ricco during a probe  into doping. He was not under formal investigation, the source  said.

The finding clearly puts 27-year-old Contador’s Tour de  France victory in July with Kazakh-funded Astana under a cloud  and threatens to leave an indelible stain on the Spaniard, who  also won the 2007 and 2009 Tours.

“Sincerely I am not worried that people will doubt my result  at the Tour de France as in this quantity (the substance) is  insignificant when trying for any kind of improvement,” Contador  said. The Contador and Tour of Spain findings have cast a pall  over the road world championships in Australia’s port city of  Geelong this week.

The Spanish team at the championships, where the men’s time  trial world title was being decided on Thursday, declined to  comment.

Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner whose victory  was later shown to be drugs-fuelled, has claimed that the sport  is riddled with doping and that its highest-profile rider,  seven-times Tour winner Lance Armstrong, has also cheated.      Armstrong has consistently denied this and never failed a  doping test.