Contador calls for doping rules to be changed

PINTO, Spain, (Reuters) – Tour de France champion  Alberto Contador yesterday called for anti-doping regulations to  be revised after his positive test for a banned anabolic agent,  saying the whole system was in question.

The 27-year-old Spaniard told Reuters: “the system is in  doubt and should be changed.”

“There has to be a limit set for substances like clenbuterol  so that quantities as tiny as those found in my body due to  contaminated food do not count as a positive.”

The International Cycling Union (UCI) said on Thursday  Contador had been provisionally suspended after a positive test  for a very small concentration of the banned anabolic agent.

In a damaging day for cycling’s already battered image, the  Tour of Spain runner up Ezequiel Mosquera and his Xacobeo team  mate David Garcia Da Pena were also suspended for suspected  doping.

Contador categorically denied rumours of a possible blood  transfusion during the Tour.

“If they want to test every sample I’ve given in the Tour,  as many different laboratories as they want, or if they want to  freeze it for three or five years until other future tests are  scientifically validated and then check it, they can do it,” he  said. “I have nothing to hide.”

Responding to comments by WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency)  director-general David Howman that there is no threshold for a  positive dope test for clenbuterol, Contador said:

“There should be… the norms have to evolve, just as they  have done for other substances like caffeine, where they changed  the regulations because they realised they weren’t  right.

“In the case of clenbuterol, positives should be positives  because of the quantity found, with a specific limit, not  because of the substance itself.”

Contador repeated that the presence of clenbuterol in his  system, in an amount 40 times less than the minimum required for  authorised anti-doping labs to be able to detect, was due to  contaminated meat containing minute traces of the substance.

“It just can’t be that positives for contaminated food stuff  like mine are placed in the same category as a standard positive  for doping,” he said.

“What I want is for all of these doubts and suspicions, even  the slightest ones, to be cleared up completely and  permanently,” he added.

Contador said he was suffering mentally because of the  stress of the allegations.

“I feel like I’m at rock bottom. I feel really let down. I’m  fighting against these accusations 24 hours of each day.”

“Right now I’m in a place I never imagined I would be, and  it’s not good,” he said.