TAS (Tribunal Arbital du Sport) has suspended Alberto Contador for two years and stripped his 2010 Tour de France win and his 2011 Giro d’Italia second place win because of an infintesimal amount of clenbuterol that was found. Andy Schleck has been awarded the 2010 Tour win. He’s been given credit for 6 months and will be able to race again August 6, 2012.
Here are some reactions:
Andy Schleck:
Andy Schleck reacts with surprise to the decision suspending Alberto Contador for two years.
“There is no reason to be happy now.” “First of all I feel sad for Alberto. I always believed in his innocence. This is just a very sad day for cycling. The only positive news is that there is a verdict after 566 days of uncertainty. We can finally move on.”
“I trust that the CAS judges took all things into consideration after reading a 4,000 page file. If now I am declared overall winner of the 2010 Tour de France it will not make me happy. I battled with Contador in that race and I lost. My goal is to win the Tour de France in a sportive way, being the best of all competitors, not in court. If I succeed this year, I will consider it as my first Tour victory.”
Eddy Mercks:
He was surprised and disgusted by the decision. “This is once again cycling that is toast. I am disgusted. This is an excessive punishment. It’s bad for everyone. For the reputation of cycling. For sponsors.”
“It’s as if someone wanted to kill cycling. They took two years to take that penalty. That’s wrong,” said Merckx. “I’m not an expert or doctor… It is only cycling that seeks to detect trace amounts, the 0.000000 …. I‘d like to do the same in other sports. “
“If there was clear evidence to prove doping of Contador, he would have been suspended immediately. We would not have waited two years.” Nevertheless he felt that “the defense strategy of Contador had not been good.”
Miguel Induráin:
“Hell, I wasn’t expecting this. It’s really bad news.”
Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wrote in a message on the Spanish government’s Twitter page that “there’s no legal reason to justify sanctioning Contador.”
Pat McQuaid, UCI President
“This is a sad day for our sport,” said Pat McQuaid, who along with the World Anti-Doping Agency, had appealed the Spanish decision clearing Contador.
“Some may think of it as a victory but that is not at all the case. There are no winners when it comes to the issue of doping: every case, irrespective of its characteristics, is always a case too many.”
Oscar Pereiro, who inherited the 2006 Tour title after Landis was stripped: “We’ve had two Spanish riders sanctioned without the UCI nor the CAS having proved that they doped… Do you know what I think? That he is innocent, I know him! … And what is clearer still is that what is really rotten in cycling is its administrators who become millionaires on the back of our sweat and effort.”
Pedro Delgado was quoted on Twitter: “I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. The UCI, WADA and CAS are just looking to make names for themselves. They ought to go away and reconsider the fight against doping.”
Delgado thought lesser penalties have been given in similar cases should have been taken into account in Contador’s case. “…if they thought the presence of clenbuterol made a ban feasible, then they should have imposed a ban of one year and not of two… this ban is over the top and even more so when the tribunal itself admits that it hasn’t demonstrated that doping has taken place… If the case had involved a less well-known cyclist, the sanction would have been smaller.”
