“Super Mario” says Tour winner is innocent until proven guilty and defends cycling against other sports
Retired super-sprinter Mario Cipollini has come to the defence of Alberto Contador, saying that is sure that the embattled Tour de France winner is clean. The legendary “Lion King”, speaking to the BBC at the London Cycle Show where he is promoting his range of bikes, also defended cycling against other sports, which do nothing like as many tests on their athletes.
“Contador has always been a champion of clean cycling and I hope he remains that way," said the Italian. "We want cycling to be clean and we want cyclists who ride with guts and passion up the mountains and against the clock; but it's a very delicate situation and I hope he clears things up: not for me but for the fans and the authorities.
"If he can do that he could emerge even cleaner than before,” he added, “and it would mean the sport wouldn't lose such an enormous talent."
Cycling is one of the sports that puts the most effort into eradicating the use of performance enhancing drugs, according to Cipollini, who won 12 stages of the Tour de France and an outright record of 42 stages of the Giro d’Italia. He pointed the finger at other, higher profile and far richer sports; he claimed that they don’t require nearly as many controls, or submit themselves to so many intrusive systems as cycling does.
“We spend a lot of time and money trying to make sure the sport is clean,” he said. “I'm talking about new initiatives like biological passports, random tests, research into new substances and so on. I don't see other sports doing as much as cycling. I would like to see somebody compare the number of tests that cycling does with other sports.
"Let's look at football [soccer], the most popular sport,” Cipollini added. I'd love them to submit themselves to the tests and surprise visits we agree to. I'd like to see football bring in biological passports and whereabouts-style testing."