AFLD positive to help UCI in the fight against doping
Bruno Genevois, President of the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) has noted that the firm can work hand in hand with UCI to protect sports from doping abuse.
AFLD has shown its intent to help the cycling governing by starting dope tests at the Tour de France 2013, a race that has a deep history with doping.
Genevois told L’Equipe, “For now, the UCI is in a waiting position, we would like to have a strategy with upstream controls, blood and urine samples, and specific searches”.
“All the same, the UCI has had the merit of putting in place the biological passport since 2008, and has been able to establish instances of doping and hand out penalties”.
“I have been able to keep up contact with the UCI, whereas I have struggled to establish continued contact with the International Tennis Federation. In the field of the fight against the doping, there are many who believe but too few who practice,” he concluded.
Tour de France is a three-week event, which take cyclists across the cyclists through different landscapes of the country and cyclists with the best cumulative time is declared as the overall winner of the race and is awarded with a yellow jersey.
It is considered as one of the most prestigious cycling race of the season and is amongst the three Grand Tour races of the season along with the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana.
Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador was handed a two-year ban for using clenbuterol at the Tour de France 2010, a race which he managed to win however, the CAS disqualified him from the victory along with the ban.
One of the doping icons, Lance Armstrong used systematic doping to achieve desired results and went unnoticed for several years.
He went onto win as many as seven Tour de France overall titles but USADA’s investigation into the American was enough to bring him down for the count and return back the seven yellow jerseys.
A Tour de France overall victory is definitely one race every top cyclist prefers to have on his resume, which is why cyclists are often caught cheating while trying to bridge the gap between their abilities and the Tour victory.
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