Diego Ulissi will racing shortly after his ban ends in March. For some this appears to contravene the MPCC’s rules and the group today said it wants to check Ulissi’s situation. This in turn upset the Lampre-Merida team who in press release tennis, smashed back their response.
Amid all this there’s a lesson: any rider in the pro peloton is taking risks with a few puff on a Ventolin inhaler as studies show it can bring about large doses in excess of the WADA threshold.
The Mouvement Pour Un Cyclisme Crédible or MPCC is sometimes the butt of jokes but what if we celebrated its achievements and laughed at those who try to mock the sport?
This group of teams has grown and led the way on anti-doping policies, often seeing the UCI copy the rules later on and taking a stance to safeguard rider health too.
It’s only January but rider retirement is in the news whether it’s Cadel Evans’ imminent halt or Nick Nuyen’s recent retirement. Nuyens has gone from the peloton to the supermarket, swapping the Carrefour de l’Arbre for a branch of Carrefour Market supermarket, a change of career to file away for a list of strange retirement options. Evans is set to become a brand ambassador for BMC bicycles.
The UCI swung into action today following a third positive case involving a rider from Astana, promising special review of the team’s World Tour licence for 2015.
The rider involved is Ilya Davidenok, normally a rider on the subsidiary Astana Continental team but promoted to the main team as a stagiaire. It’s yet more awkward news for the Kazakh team but if it’s embarrassing their licence is probably safe for 2015.
If you fell into a coma six years ago and came around yesterday it would seem as if nothing had changed. Manolo Saiz was appointed as a team preparador and hours later one of his old riders, whom the Italian federation tried but failed to ban, won Milano-Torino. Amid the wreckage left by Saiz, Alexandr Vinokourov created the Astana team and yesterday the UCI slipped out another PDF with Kazakh rider Maxim Iglinskiy named for a positive A-test for EPO.
The ongoing battle between the UCI and Roman Kreuziger continues. Yesterday saw a fresh round with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) holding an expedited hearing from Kreuziger over the provisional suspension issued by the UCI. The result is that he’s banned from racing and won’t do the Vuelta a Espana.
The UCI issued a statement on Saturday announcing the provisional suspension of Roman Kreuziger.
It’s a big test for the athlete passport system. So far the UCI has won every case it’s launched or asked others to prosecute, including winning appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). We might want the instant verdict of a toxicological test with a positive A and B test in the lab but the passport just doesn’t work like this. It works on statistics and takes time to build up patterns and then riders are given plenty of time to respond. But so far it’s won against small fry riders or those, like Dennis Menchov, who have simply retired with a shrug rather than a legal fight. Kreuziger’s case is different, he’s an active rider, a millionaire and already employing high-profile lawyers to defend him.
One year ago Daryl Impey was basking in the yellow jersey, now he’s announced a positive A and B test for banned substance probenicid. It’s normally a treatment for gout because, to keep it simple, it slows the kidneys from filtering stuff from your blood out to the urine. So it’s handy as a “masking agent”, a rider abusing steroids might use it to retain the anabolic substance in their body for longer and stop it getting into a urine sample. However the mask is obviously very detectable that either Impey’s prodigiously stupid or there’s a genuine explanation somewhere.
Several riders had passport problems before the Giro but of the travel kind and could not get a visa for the start in Belfast. Now Roman Kreuziger has passport problems of the other kind with the UCI questioning his blood values and he’s now been suspended by his Tinkoff-Saxo team and won’t ride the Tour de France.
This post isn’t about doping. Instead it’s about procedures and probabilities so apologies if you wanted something scandalous and bloody. What’s happened and what’s coming next?
French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) has come up with the sensational headline “Froome “dopé” par l’UCI” which doesn’t need much translation. Behind it is the allegation that during the Tour de Romandie Chris Froome fell ill, the team doctor wanted him to take an anti-inflammatory drug called prednisone and the UCI gave approval and that this was “rushed” with “administrative legerity”.