Spanish federation president Castaño says he hopes that things ‘go well’
In what appears to be a case of looking at things in the best possible light, Alberto Contador’s spokesman Jacinto Vidarte has said that the rider and his support team have responded favourably to today’s news concerning the case.
The UCI requested that disciplinary proceedings be opened against the rider; that’s a worrying step, but Vidarte said that the news that the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) would handle the investigation was something which gave them hope that the situation would be resolved in Contador’s favour.
“It is the normal procedure, indeed one we hoped for, that the Spanish Federation would decide on the case,” he stated, according to various media reports.
“Contador will be able to present all the documentation and demonstrate that it was a case of contaminated food.”
The 27 year old Spanish all-rounder maintains that he didn’t intentionally take Clenbuterol, despite the banned substance showing up in tests carried out on the second rest day of the Tour de France. He states that it came from tainted meat that was bought in Spain by a friend and brought across the border to Pau, where the team was staying.
The UCI today stated that it had studied the situation carefully and concluded that disciplinary proceedings should be opened against the rider.
Meanwhile the president of the RFEC has spoken about today’s UCI ruling, saying that he hopes that the Contador case ‘goes well.’
Juan Carlos Castaño didn’t clarify to Marca exactly what he meant by that. “I would like that everything goes well,” he said, “but now has to be the Committee of Competition which makes the study of all this and settles it in the way it considers most fair.”
He said that the federation would analyse the documentation that it received from the UCI, and that the Committee of Competition would begin examining the process.
“If the Committee decides to continue with the process, then it will inform the rider that it opened the file, so that the athlete can present their arguments and the documentation that he believes is necessary for his defence.”
Worryingly, he appeared to be unaware that a decision should be made within one month. “The maximum length of time to handle a case like this is three months,” he said. “We must analyze the documentation. We do not have time to see everything because there is a lot of documentation.”
However Article 280 of the UCI’s anti-doping regulations state that, “the proceedings before the hearing panel of the License-Holder’s National Federation must be completed within 1 (one) month from the time limit set for the dispatch of the summons.”
Past that, financial penalties apply. “The National Federation shall be penalized by the disciplinary commission, incurring a fine of CHF 5000 for each week’s delay without prejudice to the obligation to complete proceedings as fast as possible.” The national federation can be brought to CAS if a decision is still not made within three months after the case was first referred to him.
This three-month limit is however a worst-case scenario which both breaks article 280 and also exposes that federation to significant legal costs of all parties concerned. The UCI will therefore hope that the RFEC gets everything completed one month from now.