Alberto Contador should open books, says Frederic Grappe
Frederic Grappe, the trainer for team FDJ, has said there are two things that trouble him about the Alberto Contador controversy.
First, he finds it difficult to account for how much he improved between the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France, and second, he doesn’t know why the accused hasn’t released his physiological data if he is, as he claims,
innocent.
"I am not accusing, I am just asking questions and I ask someone to explain. In my opinion, a performance must be validated and for that reason, riders must be clear about all this. In his position, if everything is okay, I would
communicate my physiological and biomechanical data without problems."
Contador tested positive for Clenbuterol and plasticisers at the Tour de France this year. The favoured theory among doping experts is that he received an autologous blood transfusion before the test and the Clenbuterol had been in
the frozen blood.
Plasticisers are the chemicals found in blood bags, but the test is not alone considered proof of having undergone a transfusion. He has volunteered his past samples to be retested, but has not publicly disclosed his VO2 Max, which
can be used to verify if he would be physically capable of his performance in the Tour without doping substances.
"You cannot gain ten percent of performance in two weeks between the Dauphiné and the Tour. Why? Because efforts that are effectively at the limit are related to VO2 Max, and these efforts are relatively stable. We must think about
the performance gap between the riders, compare the performance of the rider compared to others. And that's where it is a problem."
UCI president Pat McQuaid has said the case is very complicated, and downplayed Contador’s original hope that the case would be rapidly resolved.
"It’s quite complicated. We are waiting for the results to come back and I don’t know how long it’s going to take. In fairness to Contador, in fairness to the sport, in fairness to the Tour de France, we need to go into the details to make sure the decision
that will be taken is the right one."
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