Sastre, Delgado, Pereiro and RFEC chief respond
Fran Contador, the brother and agent of Alberto Contador, has made clear that the suspended rider will not retire from the sport.
The Spaniard had originally said that if he was sanctioned for his Clenbuterol positive that he would walk away from cycling. He was handed a ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport today and stripped of race results such as victories in the 2010 Tour de France and 2011 Giro d’Italia.
However Fran Contador rules out any drastic action on his part. “Alberto is very clear and will not stop cycling,” he told the COPE agency.
Meanwhile the president of the Spanish Cycling Federation RFEC Juan Carlos Castaño said today that he was not happy with the decision.
“We are obliged to comply with it but we don’t agree with it,” he told Spanish radio. “It’s very bad news for Spanish sport. For us this journey has ended.”
The 2008 Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre also said he wasn’t pleased with the verdict, calling it ‘irrational, difficult to understand, and not having any logic.’
“If you have evidence and doping has been proven, you sanction it,” he told EFE. “But if there is no evidence and it is not proven, you cannot do it.”
He is also not happy that Contador should lose his results. “All this time, you had a cyclist racing with doubts about his situation, he is capable of winning and now you take away everything.”
Two other Spanish Tour winners also expressed their dissatisfaction with the ruling.
According to 1988 champion Pedro Delgado, “Sight is being lost of reality in the fight against doping,” he claimed. “The sport has a problem, no longer with the athletes, but with bodies seeking a profile above the sport.”
While he said that a one year ban might have been acceptable, he claimed that the two year suspension – which is almost completely backdated – was “exaggerated, and all the more so when the tribunal itself admits doping has not been proven.
“If the case had been of a less known cyclist, the sanction would have been lesser,” he claimed. However former RadioShack rider Fuyu Li was given a two year ban in similar circumstances.
Meanwhile 2006 winner Oscar Pereiro was even more outspoken. “Two years of sanction for Alberto Contador and the judgement shows that doping is not proven.. What sons of a big…,” he said as part of a long outburst on Twitter. “We have two Spaniards sanctioned without the UCI nor CAS proving it.
“Do you know what I think? That he is innocent, I know him.”
Pereiro was handed the 2006 Tour title after Floyd Landis tested positive for testosterone. Landis later claimed that the Spaniard also took banned substances that year, something Pereiro denies.
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