The winner of the 2010 Tour de France will not be definitively known until almost eighteen months after the event
The appeal into the case of Alberto Contador’s positive test for Clenbuterol in the 2010 Tour de France has been delayed again, the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) has announced. The hearings, which had been due to take place next week, will now not happen until November, when the 2011 season is all but over.
This means that the winner of the 2010 Tour de France will not conclusively be known until almost eighteen months after it was completed.
“As a consequence of the parties’ request, the hearing which was scheduled for 1, 2 and 3 August 2011 is cancelled and will be rescheduled for new dates, probably in November 2011,” reads the statement from the CAS.
The latest delay is reportedly to allow for a “second exchange of written submissions” between the three parties involve: Contador and the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC), the International Cycling Union (UCI) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The request was “formulated by WADA with the unanimous agreement of the three other parties.”
The latest delay is one of many in the case, which first came to light at the end of September last year. even though Contador’s positive samples were taken on the second rest day of the Tour on July 21st. The UCI requested that RFEC open disciplinary procedures in November, which due to further delays, were not concluded until mid-February of this year.
While RFEC accepted Contador’s explanation that the rider must have accidentally ingested the substance, since the quantities were so small – and would have been undetectable to virtually all anti-doping laboratories except the one in Cologne, Germany to which his samples were sent – it originally proposed a one-year ban. After further presentations by Contador’s defence though, the rider was eventually cleared to race in time for the Volta ao Algarve.
The UCI and WADA both appealed the verdict to CAS, although the UCI took the full thirty-day period allowed to do so, and the hearing was originally scheduled for June, before the start of the Tour de France. This was put back to early August after a request from Contador’s defence team, which meant that he started the Tour de France under a cloud of uncertainty.
Since being cleared by RFEC Contador has been free to race, until the CAS rules otherwise. After winning the Vuelta a Murcia and the Volta a Catalunya for his new team Saxo Bank-SunGard, Contador won what has been described as the toughest Giro d’Italia for many years.
The Spanish rider was booed at the team presentation of the Tour de France this month, but looked to be on form for a successful defence of his title. He could only manage fifth, the first time he has failed to win a Grand Tour since his first Tour victory in 2007, thanks to a niggling knee injury and being dropped on the stage to the Col du Galibier.
Despite previous talk of trying to win all three Grand Tours in one year, Contador has since confirmed that he will not be riding the Vuelta a España, which starts on August 20th. He finished his 2010 season straight after the Tour and may well not race again in 2011; whether he races in 2012 will be decided by the CAS.