the artist wrote:
the whole contador thing has been a bit drawn out and messy. can he still appeal against this ban at all?
Could he appeal? Yes......but he'd be an idiot to do so.
Contador has made this whole affair drawn out and messy. If he had just accepted the 1 year ban initially handed to him he'd have been back and racing.
I think he has received very poor advice from people around him. His brother (also his manager I believe) is a Grade A idiot.
However.......and this is where I have some sympathy with him (albit only a tiny amount) is that Pat McQuaid of the UCI told Alberto to keep quiet about the positive test. The UCI also tried to keep this quiet which I believe was done in the hope that the positive would never come to light and the winner of the previous 2 Tdf's could be seen by the world at large as 'clean'.
Cycling is in a strange old place at the moment. Increasingly popular, still drawing fans into the sport despite the retirement of Armstrong. However the average teams are finding it increasingly difficult to secure sponsorship as a result of the damage caused by doping stories and the global recession.
Cycling is cleaner than it ever has been. Easily cleaner than many of the sports that are seen as not having a drug problem. Between biological passports, in and out of competition testing, post race testing, team testing etc etc there are less and less places for dopers to hide.
Gradually the people around cycling will become cleaner. It'll be clean racers who go on to be team managers and Director Sportifs. Gradually 'doping' will be erased from our sport.
What I think the UCI were thinking of doing with Contador was brushing this under the carpet. Every positive test hurts the image of cycling. A positive from the winner of the biggest race in cycling........well that takes huge chunks out of the sport.
