With the one month deadline up this week, the UCI has told VeloNation that it will make a final decision about a possible appeal in the Contador case either today or tomorrow.
“My lawyer was in the office here in the morning with me, saying that he is still studying the document and is in discussion with WADA,” UCI president Pat McQuaid said yesterday. “It will be probably tomorrow [Wednesday] or the next day when we sit down and discuss the full report, and decide what we are going to do.”
Under anti-doping rules, the UCI has one month after receiving the full documentation from a national federation to decide whether or not it will appeal that decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The Spanish Federation RFEC announced that it was clearing Contador without any sanction on February 16th, but it took a further eight days for the UCI to receive the dossier on the case.
Since then it has been mulling over the RFEC’s reasoning.
Contador tested positive for traces of Clenbuterol on the second rest day of last year’s Tour de France. The substance is banned in any quantity and normally punishable by a two year ban. The rider however claimed that the substance entered his system via steak bought in Irún, Spain, brought to the Tour and consumed at the team hotel.
Under WADA rules, accidental ingestion – if proven – normally leads to a one year ban. However the RFEC concluded that he had no fault in the matter and dropped all charges. He has since returned to competition and will line out today in the toughest stage of the Volta a Catalunya, which concludes with a summit finish at Andorra.
The Spanish federation’s decision was preceded by comments by several high-profile individuals and parties. Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said on Twitter that he believed “there's no legal reason to justify sanctioning Contador."
Both the Spanish Social Democrat Party (PSOE) and Popular Party also backed Contador’s claims that he didn’t knowingly ingest the substance and should therefore be cleared. In addition to that, Angel Juanes, président of the Audiencia Nacional Española, the highest legal court after the supreme court, said in El Mundo that the rider could not be found guilty under Spanish law.
He told the newspaper that Contador “has not doped” and “should be acquitted.”
UCI President Pat McQuaid commented afterwards, saying that he wasn’t happy with the outside influence. “It’s up to sport to police itself,” he told reporters at the Tour of Oman. “I don’t think it should be interfered with by politicians who don’t know the full facts of the cases and then make statements that are purely political statements.
“I wasn’t surprised when you see it’s Spain. Nothing surprises me that comes from Spain. But it’s disappointing.”
RFEC believes case will continue:
The RFEC stated last week that it was expecting the UCI to appeal to CAS. “We are confident that the International Cycling Union (UCI) will appeal the acquittal of Contador,” said RFEC legal adviser Luis Sanz to AS.
The federation president Juan Carlos Castaño explained why they felt this was the case. “Pat McQuaid congratulated us for the work done, but complained of political interventions.” When asked if there was indeed pressure to clear the rider, he denied it. “But those indirect interferences did not seem appropriate. The image transmitted to the outside is that yes, he was exonerated by such statements,” he conceded.
VeloNation has been told by a source with knowledge of the case that elements within the RFEC were themselves unhappy with the pressure from politicians and judges before the decision.
McQuaid said yesterday that nobody had communicated any intentions to the RFEC about an appeal. “That is their opinion. They have no grounds to suspect that, other than it being their own opinion,” he said.
Meanwhile another rider who tested positive for Clenbuterol was cleared yesterday, and said the Contador situation may have helped him. Philip Neilsen was told by the Danish Sports Federation (DIF) that his positive test during the Vuelta a Mexico in April 2010 would not be punished, as it believed it was a case of food contamination.
The two cases are different as there is a known high rate of Clenbuterol use in South America, where the regulations are much more lax than in Europe.
Reports from WADA forwarded to the RFEC by the UCI point out that of 286,748 tests carried out on meat in Europe in 2008, just one Italian case was confirmed as positive for Clenbuterol. Contador’s legal team have complained that the sample size was too small to draw conclusions from it.
If the Contador case goes before CAS, that probability of contamination will be taken into account.
Whatever the UCI’s decision, WADA also has the chance to appeal. It has 21 days longer than cycling’s governing body to reach a conclusion, and so will announce its intention within the next three weeks.