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LATEST NEWS: CADEL EVANS WEIGHS IN ON CONTADOR
Road Bike Action and AFP
February 7, 2012
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Cadel Evans has never been shy to have an opinion. Photo: Bettini
Reigning Tour de France champion Cadel
Evans says the two-year doping ban for Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador
shows the sport is at the forefront in the battle against drugs.
Contador received the sanction on Monday after testing positive for
banned anabolic agent clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour de France and was
stripped of his victory. The 29-year-old Spaniard claimed he had
ingested the substance by eating a contaminated steak, an explanation
that satisfied Spanish cycling authorities but not the World Anti-Doping
Agency and International Cycling Union (UCI).
Australia's Evans,
who last July became his country's first winner of the Tour de France,
said the sport was doing all it could to root out doping.
"Cycling
has done more than enough to show it's doing the right things when it
comes to the fight against drugs," Australian broadcaster SBS quoted him
as saying Now it's time for other sports to look to cycling and
replicate what we do so the fight against drugs in sports can maybe be
beaten one day across all sports."
Contador's win in 2010 was his
third in the Tour de France and under UCI rules his suspension means he
forfeits the victory to Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who finished as
runner-up.
Evans said he had followed the Contador case from afar and trusted the authorities to do their job.
"I don't know all that goes on behind there and what all the real facts
are and so on," he said on the sidelines of Monday's Laureus World
Sports Awards in London, where he was nominated as sportsman of the year
but lost out to tennis player Novak Djokovic. "I go along and do my job and that's up for the authorities to decide. It was a case that dragged on for so long I had no idea what was going on and what was going to happen. I just read the newspapers like the rest of us."
Phil Anderson, the Australian cyclist who competed in 13 Tour de France
races, said riders who had been racing against Contador would be
feeling cheated.
"Everybody's striving for the top place on the
podium and you're standing behind someone who's cheating, or found to
have been cheating like that, you're really the biggest loser," he told
Fox Sports News. "It's very disappointing that you're fighting for
three weeks in an epic battle such as the Tour of Italy and Tour de
France and finally you land on second position and never get to enjoy
that sweetness of a victory."
The Court of Arbitration for Sport
said Contador's suspension runs through to August 6, 2012, which means
that he will be unable to take part in this year's Tour de France. |
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