Doping

Former cyclist Joe Papp, who testified against Floyd Landis in 2007, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell EPO and other drugs, the AP is reporting

Arnie Baker, the former Floyd Landis advisor who was named in a French arrest warrant along with Landis yesterday, said he has has offered to talk to French authorities but they have not taken him up on the offer. Baker denies any involvement in hacking into the French anti-doping agency's computer system, the alleged act French authorities said they want to talk to him about.

A French judge has issued an international arrest warrant for Floyd Landis for allegedly hacking into a French anti-doping lab's computer system, the French anti-doping agency announced Friday.

Italian rider Eddy Ratti has been suspended following a positive EPO test, the UCI announced on Saturday.

Our readers weigh in on doping cases, the risks on the road and the Trek lawsuit.

The fines levied this week against former Giro d’Italia winner Danilo Di Luca reflect the greater latitude recent rule changes have given the UCI in handing down penalties, the governing body noted Tuesday.

American Tom Zirbel faces as much as a two-year suspension after a laboratory analysis of a B sample confirmed an earlier positive for DHEA.

Vania Rossi, a top Italian cyclocross racer and girlfriend of Riccardo Ricco, has tested positive for the blood booster CERA, the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) announced Friday.

Just a day after successfully defending the suspension of Stefan Schumacher in the International Court of Arbitration for Sport, anti-doping officials scored a significant legal win in a Spanish courtroom.

CAS, the world sport's top court, on Monday rejected an appeal by disgraced German cyclist Stefan Schumacher against a two-year ban for doping during the 2008 Olympic Games.

The French bank, Caisse d’Epargne, will end its sponsorship of the Spanish cycling team that bears its name at the end of the 2010 season.

Former Spanish cyclist Jesus Manzano has repeated doping charges against former teammate and compatriot Alejandro Valverde, adding that the Vuelta a España winner should admit his violations rather than continuing to deny them.

Saying they are now redundant, Lance Armstrong said on Saturday that he has dispensed with the additional personal doping tests he adopted to silence critics who suspect him of using drugs.

Alejandro Valverde’s long and winding road and his alleged links to Puerto reached a head this week during a three-day hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which closed Thursday with a hint that the Vuelta a España champion likely won’t be racing in Italy anytime soon.

Euskaltel-Euskadi said it will impose surprise internal controls on its riders in an effort to secure the team’s future.

Embattled Italian rider Davide Rebellin is challenging charges that he doped during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and denied that he took performance-enhancing substances.

Astana will ride with two more for 2010 as Australian brothers Scott and Allan Davis are set to join the team, the squad reported Wednesday.

French officials have confirmed that they are investigating blood doping equipment discovered in a search of medical supplies belonging to the Astana team of Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong during this year's Tour de France.

Gravity racer David Mock tested positive for marijuana following the Yankee Clipper Four-cross in Windham, New York in August.

Italy's anti-doping prosecutor on Thursday asked the Italian Olympic Committee's anti-doping tribunal to hit former Giro d’Italia winner Danilo Di Luca with a three-year ban. Di Luca tested positive for the banned blood-booster EPO twice during May's Giro, in which he finished second behind Russian Denis Menchov.

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Masters racer Kenny Williams has accepted a two-year suspension after testing positive for an anabolic agent.

2009 Vuelta a España champ Alejandro Valverde may skip his title defense for a shot at the Tour de France, which he says "is the race with more international prestige."

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Former Liquigas rider Gianni Da Ros gets a double-decade ban in a doping probe that snared amateur racers, physios, gym staff and traders.

Cyclist Christian Pfannberger has received a lifetime ban from sport for repeated doping offenses, the Austrian national anti-doping agency announced.

Question: "I recently read about the UCI’s decision to strip Davide Rebellin of the silver medal he 'won' at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing because he tested positive for CERA. As my kid would say, 'big whoop.'"

Floyd Landis and the management company running the OUCH professional cycling team have agreed to end his contract a year early.

Giro stage winner gets four-year suspension for CERA

Fuji-Servetto's Alberto Fernandez De La Puebla Ramos has been suspended following a positive EPO test.

Twenty-year-old J.D. Swanguen will serve a three-month suspension for testing positive for pot at doping control at mountain bike National Championships.

When the lights dimmed in the Congrés de Palais in Paris for the presentation of the 2010 Tour de France, the unexpected was the plat du jour. Surprises are always part of the Tour presentation, and 2010 certainly didn’t disappoint. Hard days in the Pyrénées and a long, penultimate-day time trial in Bordeaux set the stage for a final week clash that should keep fans on the edge of their seats.

Recently-crowned Tour of Portugal champion, Nuno Ribeiro, tested positive for the banned blood booster EPO before the race, the rider said confirmed Friday after being notified by cycling's world ruling body. Ribeiro also won the race in 2003 but his recent victory is now under a cloud after the results from doping control prior to the race, on August 6, were officially released Friday. The 32-year-old's Liberty Seguros team announced Friday that two other riders with the team, Spaniards Hector Guerra and Isidro Nozal, had also tested positive for EPO.

Beloki plots his own comeback

As if the last two years hadn’t happened at all, Alexander Vinokourov is back at the Vuelta a España and back on the Astana team. Ignore that two-year racing ban for illegal blood transfusions and forget about the behind-the-scenes power struggle at Astana involving Johan Bruyneel, Vinokourov and the power cadre of Kazakh backers. At least that’s what Vinokourov wants everyone to do.

Alexander Vinokourov is back from his two-year doping ban, but his immediate future is anything but certain. In fact, the only thing certain about the charismatic Kazakh rider and his racing plans is shrouded in uncertainty. Besides a few vague public comments, almost no one is willing to go on the record to answer some basic questions on whether or not Vinokourov will be racing in an Astana jersey, a sure sign that something is cooking.

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The latest Tour de France doping scandal involving stage-winner Mikel Astarloza could jeopardize the future of one of Spain’s few remaining top professional teams. According to reports in the Spanish media, Astarloza’s provisional suspension for failing an out-of-competition control for the banned blood booster EPO could threaten financial backing of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team.

Alejandro Valverde will have something to prove when the Clásica San Sebastián, one of the top one-day events on the UCI ProTour, takes places on Saturday in northern Spain. The 29-year-old Caisse d'Epargne rider was recently banned from competing in Italy for two years by the Italian Olympic Committee after he was implicated in the Operación Puerto doping scandal. The decision, which Valverde has contested, ruled him out of the Tour de France, the 16th stage of which passed through Italy.

Alberto Contador is still celebrating his dominant Tour de France victory, but speculation about where he will race in 2010 will be fueling the rumor mill for weeks to come. While he’s been linked to moves to Garmin-Slipstream or Caisse d’Epargne, what is clear is that he will not join Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel on the new RadioShack team for 2010. “What’s sure, it will be on a different team than Lance,” Contador said. “We’ll see what we can do, whether it’s a new team or find a team that is 100 percent behind me to confront this race to win it again.”

Tour de France chief Christian Prudhomme was cautiously optimistic in celebrating a scandal-free 96th edition on Sunday. For the first time in recent history the world's biggest bike race avoided being dragged through the mire by drugs cheats. On this year's race only the sublime performances of Contador in the grueling mountain stages prompted some experts to raise eyebrows. However Contador, who won with a comfortable lead over his rivals, insists he is a clean Tour champion.

Lance Armstrong ruffled some feathers when he called the 2008 Tour de France a “joke” in the months ahead of his celebrated comeback. The seven-time Tour winner has since apologized for making those remarks, but the top stars from last year’s Tour are not having much luck in the 2009 edition. Of last year’s top 10, only two – Frank Schleck and Christian Vande Velde – are hanging among the leaders this year. Four – Bernhard Kohl, Samuel Sánchez, Alejandro Valverde and Tadej Valjavec – aren’t even in the race.

Tour de France race leader Alberto Contador on Thursday refused to respond to questions relating to his stunning climbing performance in the 15th stage and Thursday’s time trial victory. Spain's 2007 champion took another step towards overall victory when he won the 18th stage time trial to take a virtually unassailable lead of 4:11 over Luxembourg's Andy Schleck. Coming less than a week after his impressive victory on the summit of Verbier in Switzerland, it has cemented Contador's reputation as the best stage racer in the world.

The Johan Bruyneel era at the Astana team will conclude at the end of this season. Bruyneel confirmed to Belgian television Sporza that he will stop running the Kazakhstan-backed team at the conclusion of the 2009 season, citing a breakdown over the expected return of Kazakh rider Alexander Vinokourov. “Astana is a closed chapter for me,” Bruyneel told Sporza.

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Johan Bruyneel said if Astana wants to get rid of him as team manager, they should tell him to his face. While a months-long struggle over financial problems apparently resolved for the team ahead of the start of the Tour, the imminent return of Alexander Vinokourov seems to be creating more turbulence. A report in Friday’s edition of L’Equipe said that officials from the Kazakh-backed team plan to jettison the Belgian director and rebuild the team around Vinokourov and Spanish climber Alberto Contador.

Alexander Vinokourov said Wednesday he intends to ride for Astana later this year or there will be serious consequences for those who keep him from riding on the Kazakh-financed team. In a press conference held in Monaco in advance of Saturday’s Tour de France start, Vinokourov, whose suspension for homologous blood doping ends on July 24, said there’s no possibility that he would ride for any team other than the one he helped establish in 2006.

Ten days before the start of the Tour de France is a busy time for any ProTour team manager, but Wednesday was a particularly crazy day for Garmin-Slipstream team manager Jonathan Vaughters. During the same news cycle that reported rumors of Garmin’s interest in signing 2007 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, the team also released its nine-man Tour roster, leaving off three active riders from last year’s squad.

For the second day in a row, a Frenchman won in a breakaway at the Dauphiné Libéré, this time with veteran head-banger David Moncoutie snagging an impressive victory in the week’s hardest stage over the French Alps. And for the third year in a row, it appears that Cadel Evans will finish runner-up, but it’s not for a lack of trying. The Silence-Lotto captain has finished second twice in a row at the Dauphiné before going on to second at the Tour de France in 2007 and in 2008.

Bernhard Kohl ? the Austrian rider who tested positive for the blood-booster CERA during last year’s Tour de France ? admitted that blood doping was the most effective way to cheat. In an extensive interview with the French sports daily L’Equipe, Kohl said extractions of blood began nearly a year before competition.

Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) powered to a morale-boosting time trial victory Sunday against archrival Alberto Contador (Astana) to open the 61st Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. Evans covered the technical, 12km course in Nancy in 15 minutes, 36.64 seconds, posting the best time on a steep climb at 3km and then holding off Contador by eight seconds to win the stage and claim the leader’s jersey at the eight-day Dauphiné.

The 61st Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré clicks into gear this weekend in the traditional dress rehearsal ahead of the Tour de France with a highly anticipated duel between Alberto Contador and Cadel Evans. While many eyes will be on those two for a glimpse of bigger things to come in July, the outright battle for overall victory should be wide open, with such names as Ivan Basso, Igor Anton, Robert Gesink, ambitious French riders such as Rémy Di Gregorio and Pierre Rolland lining up in one of the most competitive fields in years.

As the Giro d’Italia winds down, the troubled Kazakh-backed Astana team still isn’t sure it will be racing the Tour de France in July. The financial woes that have left portions of riders’ salaries unpaid are closer to being resolved, but UCI president Pat McQuaid said team sponsors must meet a Sunday deadline or risk suspension.

Tuesday’s first mountain stage provided an interesting antipasti of who’s going to be the main attraction in this centenary Giro d’Italia.   Danilo Di Luca (LPR), the 2007 Giro champion, sprinted to victory ahead of 2000 Giro winner Stefano Garzelli (Acqua e Sapone) out of an elite group of about 40 riders to remind everyone that he’s still a force to reckon with.  

Weeks of hype and anticipation culminate Saturday as the centennial celebration of cycling’s most colorful and emotional race finally clicks into gear. The Giro d’Italia is celebrating its 100th birthday with all the raw emotion, intense passion and hard-edged racing that makes the Italian grand tour one of the season’s highlights. Stepping center-stage with aplomb is Lance Armstrong, back in his first grand tour since winning the 2005 Tour de France.

Mont Ventoux will be the top attraction of a challenging 2009 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, a favorite warm-up for Tour de France contenders. BMC snagged an important invitation to race the demanding, eight-day course across the heart of the French Alps June 7-14, which might help ease some of the team’s disappointment after being overlooked for the Tour de Suisse later that month. Race officials on Monday announced details of the 2009 route, which will have few opportunities for sprinters and plenty of challenges for riders bucking for the overall.

Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) sprinted to his first victory of the 2009 season in Wednesday’s third stage at the Vuelta a Castilla y León. Levi Leipheimer (Astana) crossed safely with the pack in the second-category summit finish at the San Isidro ski area to retain the overall leader’s jersey he claimed after winning Tuesday’s individual time trial.