POSTED: September 30th 2010
NewsUpdate
Tour de France winner Contador blames contaminated food for positive test
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT / Sports Features Communications
LONDON, Sep 30: Cycling is reeling again because of doping issues with Alberto Contador, the three-times Tour de France champion, blaming contaminated food for a positive test and Vuelta a Espana runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera and fellow Spaniard David Garcia Da Pena also coming up positive.
The first eruption came when the international cycling union said that Tour winner Contador, 27, had failed a test om both A and B samples during this year's race for the muscle-building and fat-burning drug clenbuterol .
Contador said: "This is a clear case of food contamination," after being suspended provisionally by the UCI on confirmation of the test results from a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory in Cologne.
It had found a "very small concentration" of clenbuterol in Contador's urine sample on July 21. The amount was 400 times less than the 50 picogram benchmark measurement that anti-doping laboratories must be able to detect.
Contador could be stripped of his Tour title and handed a two-year ban for a first offence but the UCI is bound, first, to investigate his claim that meat bought in Spain was to blame. He said the meat had been bought in after complaints about food at the hotel being used by his Astana team. The only previous Tour winner stripped of the title was American Floyd Landis in 2006.
Contamination
Contador added: "The UCI itself affirmed in front of me that it was a case of food contamination. This is a genuine mistake. I think it will be resolved in a clear way, with the truth up front. The UCI understands it is a special case, which has to be examined."
Clenbuterol can strip fat and enhance muscle size and can also have a short-term stimulant effects, including increasing aerobic capacity, blood pressure and alertness. It has led to bans for cyclists in the past. Like stimulants such as amphetamine or ephedrine, it can increase the heart rate and body temperature.
Athletes and body builders are thought to use it in combination with other performance-enhancers such as growth hormone and steroids to build and define muscles. It is listed by Wada as an anabolic agent that is prohibited for use by athletes at all times, both in and out of competition.
American swimmer Jessica Hardy tested positive for clenbuterol at the US trials in July 2008 and served a one-year suspension but the Court of Arbitration for Sport later accepted her explanation that she had unknowingly taken it in a contaminated food supplement.
Mosquera and Garcia da Pena, Xacobeo team mates, tested positive for hydroxyethyl starch during their home, Spanish, race. The samples were also tested in Cologne. Hydroxyethyl starch is a plasma substitute that increases blood volume,, allowing red cells to continue to deliver oxygen to the body.
Keywords · Contador · Tour de France · Mosquera · WADA · dope test
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