Alberto Contador’s defence rejected
Three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador’s defence against testing positive for Clenbuterol at the Tour de France is based on two points. The first is that the banned substance
got into his blood via tainted meat, and the second is that the amount was too little to positively affect his performance. Both of the explanations have been rejected by doping experts.
"You'll never find a ton of it, because the doses are really small," said Christiane Ayotte of the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited lab, located just outside of Montreal, Quebec. "It's used in sports
where they need to cut weight...Just because it's small doesn't mean it's not doping...This is just the dopers adjusting, or [becoming unadjusted], to the testing."
Contador was recently encouraged by the outcome of a doping case against German table-tennis player Dimitrij Ovtcharov. The tennis player tested positive for Clenbuterol at the China
Open, but was cleared of the charge by the German Table-Tennis Federation. Like Contador, Ovtcharov used the contaminated meat defence.
Detlef Thieme, the director of the Institute of Doping Analysis in Kreischa, Germany, explained that the cases have little in common. Ovtcharov proved that others who ate the same
food as him also tested positive for Clenbuterol, whereas none of Contador’s teammates who dined with him had the substance in their blood.
On top of that, Clenbuterol has been outlawed in European meat (which was what Contador ate) since 1996, but it is still common in China, where Ovtcharov had consumed it. According to Thieme, "thousands
of tests" have found no traces of Clenbuterol in Spanish beef.
The second point of Contador’s defence has been rejected by Ayotte, as has his suggestion that there should be a lower limit to the amount of drug found for it to be considered doping.
"We can't link content in urine to performance, because we don't know the time, the [method] of administration or the dose...If this case is lost because they're concluding the amount is too small, that
would be a major problem. It's not the end of the world, but if competent arbitrators decide that, my heart would break. More dopers would go through the net."
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