Contador wants samples to be frozen
Source: Agencies |
October 3, 2010, Sunday
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THREE-TIME Tour de France champion Alberto Contador challenged cycling authorities yesterday to freeze his urine and blood samples until technology can show he rode clean in this year's race and disprove his positive test for clenbuterol.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Contador stuck to his story that contaminated meat is the cause of his positive test on July 21 for the fat-burning and muscle-building drug.
"I can tell you I am not a scientist but I can also tell you that all my urine and all my blood samples are in the lab, and I call for them to be analyzed as many times as necessary to clear up this case," Contador said. "If it is necessary to freeze either my urine or my blood samples so that five years from now, when the system has been further perfected, it can be analyzed, I authorize this."
Blood and urine samples taken for drug tests during the Olympics are routinely stored for up to eight years so they can be retested as newer doping-detection technology emerges.
During the Tour, the samples are given to cycling's governing body. But the UCI is not obliged to freeze them, although it has that option.
Contador was provisionally suspended by the UCI last Thursday after a small amount of clenbuterol was discovered in his urine sample by a laboratory in Cologne, Germany.
The same lab also found plastic residues that might turn up after a transfusion of blood from a plastic bag, according to news reports in France and Germany.
Contador said he hasn't been informed of any such find, and vehemently denies any suggestions he underwent a transfusion with his own blood to receive an energy boost before a grueling mountain stage on July 22.
WADA Director-General David Howman says any positive test containing only trace amounts of a banned substance should still be taken seriously. "(Just because) a small amount is detected, it doesn't mean you weren't cheating," Howman said from the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, UCI President Pat McQuaid said yesterday that Spain's government should recognize it faces a doping problem in cycling and do more to eradicate it as another Spanish cyclist was provisionally suspended for a positive test.
Olympic cross country cycling medalist Margarita Fullana became the fourth Spanish cyclist to be suspended in three days after she returned a positive test for banned blood-booster erythropoietin.
On the day that Contador was banned, the UCI announced Spanish Vuelta runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera and teammate David Garcia Da Pena had tested positive for banned substances.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Contador stuck to his story that contaminated meat is the cause of his positive test on July 21 for the fat-burning and muscle-building drug.
"I can tell you I am not a scientist but I can also tell you that all my urine and all my blood samples are in the lab, and I call for them to be analyzed as many times as necessary to clear up this case," Contador said. "If it is necessary to freeze either my urine or my blood samples so that five years from now, when the system has been further perfected, it can be analyzed, I authorize this."
Blood and urine samples taken for drug tests during the Olympics are routinely stored for up to eight years so they can be retested as newer doping-detection technology emerges.
During the Tour, the samples are given to cycling's governing body. But the UCI is not obliged to freeze them, although it has that option.
Contador was provisionally suspended by the UCI last Thursday after a small amount of clenbuterol was discovered in his urine sample by a laboratory in Cologne, Germany.
The same lab also found plastic residues that might turn up after a transfusion of blood from a plastic bag, according to news reports in France and Germany.
Contador said he hasn't been informed of any such find, and vehemently denies any suggestions he underwent a transfusion with his own blood to receive an energy boost before a grueling mountain stage on July 22.
WADA Director-General David Howman says any positive test containing only trace amounts of a banned substance should still be taken seriously. "(Just because) a small amount is detected, it doesn't mean you weren't cheating," Howman said from the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, UCI President Pat McQuaid said yesterday that Spain's government should recognize it faces a doping problem in cycling and do more to eradicate it as another Spanish cyclist was provisionally suspended for a positive test.
Olympic cross country cycling medalist Margarita Fullana became the fourth Spanish cyclist to be suspended in three days after she returned a positive test for banned blood-booster erythropoietin.
On the day that Contador was banned, the UCI announced Spanish Vuelta runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera and teammate David Garcia Da Pena had tested positive for banned substances.
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