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LATEST NEWS: ALBERTO CONTADOR MULLS HIS FUTURE
Road Bike Action and AFP
February 7, 2012
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What of the impact on the SaxoBank team now?
Photo: Bettini
Disgraced former 2010 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador was on Tuesday braced to piece together his future as a professional cyclist a day after being handed a two-year doping ban.
Considered the most gifted racer of his generation, Contador was handed a two-year ban Monday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) following a positive test for the banned substance clenbuterol.
Backdated to August 2010, when he announced the news of his positive test weeks after his third yellow jersey triumph, the ban means Contador can return to competition on August 6, 2012.
As well as ruling him out of this year's Tour de France, the 29-year-old from Pinto will also be stripped, among other wins, of his 2010 yellow jersey which will now be handed to runner-up Andy Schleck of Luxembourg.
Despite the possible lure of competing at the Tour of Spain in September, a race Contador won in 2008 when he also won the Giro d'Italia, it is not yet known what plans Contador has for his future.
Two months after his positive test, the Spaniard, claiming he was the victim of a contaminated steak eaten during the Tour de France, said he would consider quitting if banned.
"If this is not resolved favorably and in just fashion then I would have to consider whether I would ever get back on a bike," Contador told Spanish broadcaster Telecinco in October 2010.
If he is to find any kind of succour from the CAS decision, it is the fact doping experts believe he did not ingest clenbuterol intentionally. They deemed the Spaniard was likely a victim of a contaminated food supplement.
Reports from Spain late Monday, citing his brother and manager Fran, suggested Contador would return to the sport - a possibility that can only boost the hopes of his Saxo Bank team.
Run by Bjarne Riis, a former Tour de France winner who owned up to cheating with drugs to win the race in 1996, Contador is the team's marquee rider in stage races.
But more importantly, his WorldTour ranking points are crucial. Affiliation to the WorldTour series - via a system governed by ranking points, financial viability and sound ethical principles - guarantees entry to cycling's biggest races.
On his own, Contador has racked up a massive amount of the points required by the team for entry to the series - a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the International Cycling Union (UCI).
The UCI said Monday said: "If we do not take into account the points contributed by Contador, amounting to around 68 percent of his team's total points, Saxo Bank no longer appear to satisfy the sporting conditions to remain part of the WorldTour."
While Contador outlines his future plans later Tuesday, the sport's ruling body will simultaneously be asking its licences commission to guage whether Saxo Bank has the right to remain in the UCI WorldTour.
AND THE SPANISH PRESS WEIGHS IN....
Spain's press bemoans Contador sanction
Spain's press Tuesday slammed a two-year doping ban on Spanish cycling hero Alberto Contador as a legal muddle that left Spain looking as if it favoured drug cheats.
"Scandalous outrage," blared the front page of the biggest sports daily Marca in the strongest reaction against the penalty, which strips Contador of his 2010 Tour de France title. The sanction against Alberto Contador should go down in the history books of folly," the paper said in an editorial. "Whatever way you look it, it is an unprecedented legal outrage that puts the whole system under suspicion," it said, saying the punishment made illegitimate all three sport bodies involved.
The Lausanne, Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) hit the 29-year-old Contador with a two-year, backdated suspension running through to August 6, 2012.
It thus stripped him of his 2010 Tour de France victory - one of his three Tour wins - and the Giro d'Italia and barred him from taking part in this year's Tour de France and the 2012 London Olympics.
Contador tested positive for traces of the banned anabolic agent clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour de France, but he claimed it came from eating contaminated steak.
The Spanish Cycling Federation proposed a one-year ban, but then retracted any punishment after Contador contested it and was backed by politicians including then Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
The World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Cycling Union appealed that decision to the CAS, which imposed the two-year ban, arguing he had probably ingested it from a contaminated food supplement.
"That a court should decide to apply the maximum possible sanction and admit at the same time that there is no foundation to sustain the decision should be enough to discredit any judge," Marca said.
Rival sports daily AS's director Alfredo Relano said Contador had spent three hours explaining his innocence to the paper previously and most of the staff believed him.
"But what Contador argues cannot be proven because if there was proof, he ate it," Relano wrote. "Without that proof, the cyclist was sanctioned, he said: "Tough justice, but justice."
A few days before the Spanish federation announced it was exonerating the sportsman, Zapatero had d on Twitter that 'there is no legal reason to sanction Contador.
"The outcome leaves us again looking like a country that tolerates doping," Relano said.
Spain's leading daily El Pais said that under the CAS rules, the presence of a banned substance in an athelete's body was considered evidence of doping unless proven otherwise.
"For the CAS, Alberto Contador did not manage to prove it and for that reason he was sanctioned," El Pais said in an editorial. "In any case, it seems clear that the Contador case was handled politically with clumsiness," it said.
If the Spanish federation had imposed the one-year ban originally proposed it would have been accepted by the other sports bodies, El Pais argued. The Contador case left "an impression of chaos and arbitrariness that ruins any hint of seriousness," it added, noting that the Spanish federation had called for an exoneration and the CAS for the maximum penalty.
"Despite the legal labyrinth, the sanction on Contador and his reactions show that Spain has a more tolerant view than abroad on doping," the paper said.
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