Alberto Contador has been stripped of his victory in the 2010 Tour de France and will play no part in this year's race after the court of arbitration for sport gave the Spaniard a two-year ban for a positive test for the stimulant clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour. That race will now be awarded to Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who finished runner-up by only 39 seconds.
Contador's suspension was considered to have begun on 25 January 2011, although he had been provisionally banned for the six months before that. He will therefore return on 6 August this year – meaning he would be free to compete in his home Vuelta a España in late August and early September.
Among the races he will miss is the Olympic time trial, which is good news for Britain's Bradley Wiggins. In total, Contador will lose 12 victories in the races he has ridden since the process started, including last year's overall win in the Giro d'Italia, plus two stages and the points classification.
Schleck insisted he would not take any joy from being given the 2010 Tour title and that Contador's ban saddened him because he "always believed in his innocence". Schleck is now the favourite for this summer's race and he said: "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." Wiggins, meanwhile, has been installed as the 9-2 third favourite with one bookmaker.
L'Equipe is reporting that the International Cycling Union has applied through CAS for a €2.5m fine to be levied on the Spaniard, possibly to cover its huge legal costs. Contador could still appeal through the Swiss courts to have the suspension overturned, but it is not yet clear what his intentions are. He has called a press conference for later on Monday afternoon to address the situation.
The 2010 Tour is the second to be decided through the courts in only five years; the 2006 race winner Floyd Landis was also deprived of victory following a positive test for testosterone. The CAS verdict brings to an end one of cycling's most protracted doping sagas: Contador's positive test dated back to 21 July 2010, when he was tested during the Tour's rest day in Pau, four days before the Paris finish.
Contador proclaimed his innocence from the moment the test result was made public, claiming that he could only have ingested clenbuterol through eating beef that had been contaminated with the drug. That assertion was dismissed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which brought the appeal to CAS – together with the International Cycling Union (UCI) – after Contador was cleared by the Spanish Cycling Federation in January 2010.
In explaining the reasons behind its judgment, a CAS statement read: "Alberto Contador alleged that the presence of clenbuterol in his system originated from eating contaminated meat. The UCI and Wada submitted that it was more likely that the adverse analytical finding of the athlete was caused by a blood transfusion or by the ingestion of a contaminated food supplement than by the consumption of contaminated meat.
"The panel found that there were no established facts that would elevate the possibility of meat contamination to an event that could have occurred on a balance of probabilities. Unlike certain other countries, Spain is not known to have a contamination problem with clenbuterol in meat. Furthermore, no other cases of athletes having tested positive to clenbuterol allegedly in connection with the consumption of Spanish meat are known."
The UCI president, Pat McQuaid, said: "This is a sad day for our sport. 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."
Michele Scarponi, the new winner of the 2011 Giro, raced with Contador at Liberty Seguros prior to his own suspension for his implication in Operación Puerto, and he was muted in his response to being retroactively awarded the maglia rosa at Contador's expense.
"Together with my team, Lampre-ISD, I acknowledge the decision taken by CAS on the Contador case," Scarponi said. "From a human point of view, I'm very sorry for Alberto. From a professional aspect, this decision doesn't change the value of the results I have obtained up to now or my future objectives."
What is clenbuterol?
Like amphetamine or ephedrine, clenbuterol acts as a stimulant, increasing heart rate. In medicine, it is used to treat asthma.
Like some steroids, the drug also has anabolic effects. Athletes and body builders use it to build muscle and burn fat. The drug is banned in sports as a performance enhancer and is readily detectable in urine samples. First-time offenders risk a two-year competition ban.
The drug is officially classed as a beta-2 agonist, not a steroid.
Farmers illegally use clenbuterol to bulk up livestock and produce leaner meat. In China, where its illegal use in farming has been well documented, clenbuterol is nicknamed "lean meat powder". Some athletes have tested positive for traces of the drug after eating contaminated meat.
The drug is potentially dangerous and can have nasty side effects for humans. These can include headaches, trembling, nausea, heart palpitations and other poisoning symptoms. There have been numerous documented cases of people being forced to seek hospital treatment after eating meat contaminated with high concentrations of clenbuterol.
