L’Equipe has announced that Tour de France champion Alberto Contador will not be present at Tuesday’s announcement of the 2011 Tour de France route, with the Spaniard being set to stay away as his investigation continues.
The 27 year old is under scrutiny after he failed an anti-doping test taken during this year’s race. It is understood that the Spaniard decided not to travel to Paris.
Contador, 27, provided two urine samples during this year’s race which subsequently showed trace amounts of the banned substance Clenbuterol.
Tour runner-up Andy Schleck is expected to attend Tuesday’s presentation in Paris, and will ultimately be crowned Tour champion if Contador has his title taken away from him.
The Spaniard’s defence is that he consumed meat that was tainted with the substance. Clenbuterol has been used in the past as a growth promoter in cattle, but is currently banned in Europe.
Meanwhile WADA’s science director Olivier Rabin commented on the case yesterday, speaking about reports that plasticizers had been found in samples taken from Contador around the same time.
The presence of the substance can be indicative of a blood transfusion, particularly – as has been rumoured in the Contador case – if the levels experience a sudden surge.
Rabin underlined that such a test is not yet verified as an anti-doping measure, but echoed WADA director general David Howman’s earlier assertion that the information could be presented to a tribunal for consideration.
"There are residues. We're sure about this at that level. That's a scientific fact," Rabin said, according to AP. "How you connect that to doping is the question. Today, we cannot make a 100 percent connection between high plastic residue in blood to, 'You are doped.' That's what we're working on. Whether that can be validated or not, that's a matter for the future."
Rabin said that the test methodology would have to be peer-reviewed and also that examinations for plasticizers would have to be repeated successfully in a number of other WADA-accredited laboratories before a stand-alone test would be verified.
“When we see high plastic residues, we get some indications that, yes, this is very likely related to transfusions,” Rabin said. "But we need to do a little more work to see whether this link is 100 percent, 95 percent, 90 percent. Today, because it's not fully validated, we can use this as an indication. We don't use it as a standard of proof.”
Howman appeared to cast doubt on the suggestions that meat could have been the cause of the Clenbuterol positive.
"It's been raised before, it's been heard in a couple of cases and rejected," he said. "It's not unusual.
"The issue is, can you prove it? It's a pretty hard thing to prove that is where it (the banned substance) comes from. The tribunal will make a decision and I'm comfortable with that,” he told Reuters.
He said that WADA would make sure that no delays were made in relation to the holding of a hearing.
“It took a year to set the Landis hearing up the first time around," said Howman, referring to the disqualified 2006 Tour winner Floyd Landis.
“If we were concerned about the results management system and that there was procrastination we can take it straight to CAS and say: 'this is wrong.”
UCI President Pat McQuaid said on October 2nd that a decision would be reached in ‘eight to ten days.’ That timeframe has passed, and so a ruling is expected very shortly.