Eight month delay after bio passport panel recommends disciplinary action
Five riders who were red-flagged for doping back in December have still not been sanctioned, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.
The quintet was pinpointed by the biological passport experts appointed by the UCI, who looked at their longitudinal blood and urine tests and decided there was adequate proof to open up disciplinary proceedings against each.
However nothing has happened in the months since, prompting at least two members of the nine-man panel to complain that the UCI has not followed through.
The governing body is the only one who is able to pinpoint the riders in question as the independent experts are only permitted to work with codes rather than names.
UCI President Pat McQuaid accepted that the five riders in question had neither been identified or sanctioned as yet but said, eight months after the UCI was asked to take action, that the processes were still open and could yet result in violations. He evoked a confidentiality clause in the UCI regulations and refused to comment on specific cases.
One of the nine bio passport experts defended the UCI. “I never had the feeling they were trying to cover up something,” Olaf Schumacher told the Wall Street Journal. However according to a source who did not wish to be named, two others on the panel had expressed concern that the UCI could either be disregarding the positive results, or even shielding the riders in question.
The World Anti-Doping Agency has expressed concern about the possibility that some riders are being protected from sanction. Because of this, it will increase its monitoring of drug testing within professional cycling, pushing to ensure that all cases are being treated in a fair and accurate way.
“Our job is to make sure the system isn’t being sidestepped,” WADA director general Mr. Howman told the Wall Street Journal. “We have the right of intervening if we think cases aren’t being prosecuted appropriately.”
According to the newspaper, the past three weeks have seen WADA take steps to enable its staff to monitor samples collected for the Biological Passport. They will also be able to call for sanctions if the samples are sufficiently suspicious.
An unnamed source told the newspaper that the measure was taken after individuals and anti-doping organizations complained to WADA about the UCI.
McQuaid denied there was a problem. “I contest that there is a lack of effort to catch drug cheats,” he said, saying that he was unaware of any complaints.
The news followed the decision by WADA to send its observers to work on the Tour de France in order to ensure that the UCI was conducting the tests correctly and that everything was above board. The agency also took the unexpected move of giving the French anti-doping agency AFLD the right to request tests on suspicious riders.
If these tests were accepted by WADA, it said that it would wait until the latest possible moment before telling the UCI examiners who the rider in question was. WADA said that it wanted to remove any chance of the riders or teams being warned beforehand, and therefore having time to hide their traces.
That Tour de France arrangement seemed remarkable in that it raised questions about WADA’s faith in the UCI to act completely objectively. Today’s news now seems to bear out those questions, as it shows that the World Anti Doping Agency has real concerns that cycling’s governing body may not be acting in the best way.
The potential problem with the current system is that once the bio passport expert panel flags a set of readings as being proof of doping, it is then returned to the UCI, which is supposed to take things to the next step. This includes informing the rider in question that he is suspected of doping, and giving him a chance to explain the strange readings. The expert panel consider the responses and if they are still satisfied that a doping case exists, the UCI can then proceed.
However the governing body has the ultimate say and can simply ignore the expert panel’s decision if it so wishes.
McQuaid said a total of eight riders were red flagged in December, and that three of those had been named in May as being suspected of doping. Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas), Tadej Valjavec (Ag2r La Mondiale) and Jesús Rosendo Prado (Andalucía-CajaSur) are the trio in question, but the other five remain unknown and unsanctioned.
Critics of the biological passport system have pointed out that few big names have fallen thus far. Today’s news will further increase concerns as it suggests that the UCI might not be treating all cases equally; if that is proven to be true, it will be highly damaging for the governing body.