Having already lost an appeal to the Swiss Civil Rights court earlier this month, Alejandro Valverde’s attempt to overturn his current doping suspension in Italy has been dashed with the news that he has once again been denied by the judicial system.
The Spanish rider, who won the Vuelta a España in 2009, had gone to the Swiss Federal Tribunal to challenge his two year suspension from racing on Italian soil. One of his arguments was that one of the arbitrators was not impartial due to previous work with WADA, while he also claimed that Italian Olympic Committee CONI had acted illegally in gaining material from the Operación Puerto investigations.
Valverde had been implicated in the Puerto doping scandal in 2006 but, aided by the Spanish federation, avoided any sanction for several years. CONI was the first to punish him, successfully matching blood bags seized in the Puerto police raids to blood samples taken from Valverde when the 2008 Tour de France crossed the border into Italy. This resulted in a two year ban being handed down in May 2009.
Valverde appealed this ban to CAS but lost the case. His application to the Swiss Federal Tribunal to reverse this decision has now been ruled unsuccessful. “The current appeal must be rejected," the court has judged. It stated that his arguments were “unfounded and lacking a basis in fact.”
Valverde had continued to race elsewhere in the world after that Italian ban was handed down. The UCI and WADA lodged a joint appeal to CAS over the refusal of the Spanish cycling federation RFEC to act. After considerable delays, CAS finally ruled in their favour in May of this year. The Caisse d’Epargne leader was haded a global suspension until December 31st 2011.
Although the global ban would have prevented a return to racing on Italian soil had he been successful in his latest court action, Valverde may have hoped that a ruling in his favour might have enabled him to challenge the worldwide ban.
He has also asked the Swiss Federal Tribunal court to rule on this latter sanction. His chances of success in that action appears highly unlikely after its decision relating to the CONI judgement.
His team, which will be renamed Movistar from 2011 onwards, has said that it wants to re-sign him once he is eligible to race again.