Alberto Contador threatens to quit cycling
Three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has said he is considering giving up professional cycling after he tested positive for trace amounts of a banned substance.
"I am so disillusioned that I am thinking about giving up cycling, irrespective of what the UCI [Union Cycliste International] decides," said Contador.
The World Anti-Doping Agency is carefully following the UCI’s treatment of the case.
“We will carefully observe the process, analyse the findings of the disciplinary committee,” he told ZDF. “If something is done wrong, we will intervene.”
Contador claimed the substance must have been present in specially imported meat he ate while on tour. But that story has faced its share of skeptics.
“It's not impossible but improbable,” opined Portuguese food contamination specialist Fernando Ramos. “In my opinion, it's just a story.”
The test which discovered plasticisers in the 27-year-old’s blood has been scrutinised since it hasn’t been officially validated by the UCI. Plasticisers are the chemicals found in blood bags, and the
labs which have certified the test have stated that it all-but-proves that Contador had undergone an autologous blood transfusion during the Tour, a claim supported by an anonymous Astana rider which was published in the Belgian magazine
Humo.
“In the period between the Dauphiné and the Tour, Contador drained off blood - small bags, so that the blood values are not to disrupt the biological passport,” said the cyclist confidentially. “The removal
happened at a time when there was a trace of clenbuterol in his blood. And that trace was in the blood in the bag, until it was later put back into his body.”
Contador’s defence against the clenbuterol positive has been all-but-invalidated by the fact that the European Union banned the substance in 1996. Of 83,203 meat samples across Europe which were tested
in the last two years, only one was found to have contained the substance. The positive sample was not found in Spain, which is where Contador claimed the meat had come from.
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