David Howman won’t comment specifically on Tour winner’s situation
Alberto Contador may have tested positive for a miniscule amount of Clenbuterol, but WADA’s director general David Howman didn’t rule out a sanction when contacted for his reaction.
“The issue is the lab has detected this. They have the responsibility for pursuing [it],” he told the Associated Press. “There is no such thing as a limit where you don’t have to prosecute cases. This is not a substance that has a threshold.
“Once the lab records an adverse finding, it’s an adverse finding and it has to be followed up.”
On Wednesday, Contador’s press agent released the news that the 27 year old Spaniard had been told that a urine sample taken on the second rest day of the Tour de France had revealed traces of the banned substance. This was followed up by a communiqué from UCI, which stated that both A and B samples had been tested and that minute amounts of the banned substance were found.
The UCI revealed that the concentration traced by the laboratory was 50 picograms, or 50 trillionths of a gram, which is 400 time less than what anti-doping laboratories accredited by WADA must be able to detect.
There is no legal threshold for the substance, but the minute amounts concerned are being used by Contador to back up his claim that the result came after eating contaminated meat.
The UCI has said that it is in consultation with WADA and that a full investigation will take what it termed as ‘some time’ to complete.
Howman appeared a little sceptical of the notion of tainted meat, even though there have been many cases of the growth promoter being used in cattle and residual amounts being transferred to humans.
“Clenbuterol is a substance that has been used for over 20 to 30 years,” he said, referring to sportspeople utilising it to achieve performance gains. “It is not anything new. Nobody has ever suggested it is something you can take inadvertently.”
Contador’s defence is based on exactly that suggestion. He will seek to prove that the ingestion of the substance was both accidental and also at a level that would provide no performance benefit at all.
The investigation and outcome may well end up being a test case for sport. WADA traditionally states that athletes are obliged to ensure that they don’t accidentally ingest any controlled substances, but this stance could be complicated by the minute amounts of the substance detected. Drug tests have become increasingly sensitive in recent years, and it has been said that this result was only achieved as the Cologne lab’s sophisticated equipment was used.
It has been claimed that if the sample was tested elsewhere, no traces would have been found.
Earlier this year, team RadioShack rider Li Fuyu was suspended after testing positive for the drug, as was the Italian Alessandro Colo.
Previously, US swimmer Jessica Hardy tested positive for it at the U.S. trials in July 2008. Although the Court of Arbitration for Sport accepted that she had unknowingly taken the substance, she was still handed a one-year ban.
Because of that, Contador’s defence is likely to be based around the tiny traces of the substance , with the Spaniard already stating that there could be no possible performance benefit.