live-cycle

In the summer of 2010 I spent three memorable weeks travelling around France. It was a wonderful time, driving south through champagne country to the Alps, traversing the Massif Central to the Pyrenees, up to Bordeaux, and finally, frantically, fantastically, finishing up in Paris, as one does. Along the way I indulged my passion for cycling, riding a velowave of enthusiasm, soaking up the ins and outs and idiosyncracies of the sport.
I was, of course, following the Tour de France. But it was more than just following it – I was covering the race as a journalist and had full press access to the course, officials, sponsors and, most wonderfully, to the riders themselves. That was how, on a hot Sunday in late July, I found myself right on the finish line on the Champs Elysees to see Mark Cavendish throw up his arms in triumph to win the stage, followed shortly by a beaming Alberto Contador, the overall victor.
Those three weeks seemed like a lifetime, an endless stream of towns and hotels, press conferences and mountain passes. The rollercoaster ride came to one wonderful conclusion on the cobbles of the Champs Elysees. My last sight of Contador was the next morning at breakfast in our hotel, where his smile was still as broad as the day before. And that was the end of it. All over. Let’s go home to bask in the memory of it all, in the knowledge that, in my opinion, the right man had won. Or so I thought.
But it wasn’t all over. Two months later the Tour authorities announced that a trace of a banned substance, clenbuterol, had been found in Contador’s bloodstream. Farmers sometimes use clenbuterol as a fat-burning and muscle-building supplement to fatten their livestock, and it is also used by body-builders. That is the opposite of what Contador would want when he was cycling up the Pyrenees in the middle of the Tour. Contador said the clenbuterol must have come from eating tainted meat on a rest day in the Pyrenees. Just over a year ago the Spanish cycling federation proposed a one-year ban on Contador, but cleared him a month later on appeal. UCI (the international cycling union) and WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) asserted that the contamination was the result of an illicit blood transfusion, and appealed to the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS), which, after many delays, finally announced its decision yesterday. The court rejected Contador’s assertion that the clenbuterol must have been the result of eating contanimated meat. Equally, it also found that the UCI’s blood-transfusion scenario was unlikely. He was proven neither innocent nor guilty – Contador’s conviction comes because the burden of proof remains with him to explain away the presence of the substance. The CAS, in a 98-page report, concluded that the clenbuterol probably came from contaminated food supplements taken by Contador. The CAS has banned Contador for two years, retrospectively from August 5, 2010. If Contador had accepted the Spanish federation’s year-long ban, he would free to ride this year’s Tour and the Olympic time trial. But Contador maintained his innocence, and now he will able to return to racing only in time for the Vuelta a Espana (Spanish tour) in August.
The most obvious fallout from this debacle is that Contador forfeits his 2010 Tour victory, his 2011 win in the Giro d’Italia, and about a dozen other victories during that time. The 2010 Tour victory now goes to Andy Schleck, who rode for Saxo Bank at the time. He has since moved to Radioshack Nissan Trek, while Contador now rides for Saxo Bank-Sungard. So there is some irony in the fact that Saxo Bank-Sungard could lose its licence and place in the World Tour if the UCI decides that it no longer qualifies – Contador earned 68 per cent of the team’s qualifying points.
Many people have commented on this case, and opinion is riven by spite, politics and misinformation. But the most poignant and pertinent comment comes from Andy Schleck, who said: “First of all I feel sad for Alberto. I always believed in his innocence. If now I am declared overall winner of the 2010 Tour de France it will not make me happy. I battled with Contador in that race and I lost. My goal is to win the Tour de France in a sportive way, being the best of all competitors, not in court. If I succeed this year, I will consider it as my first Tour victory.” I wish him luck.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Dennis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.