Posted at 6:26 a.m., Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Cycling: Tour de France champ not welcome in Germany
Associated Press
HAMBURG, Germany — Even though Tour de France champion Alberto Contador he wasn't likely to ride, organizers of an upcoming race have said he is not welcome in their event.The chief organizer of the Pro-Tour's Cyclassics event on Aug. 19 said that the race doesn't want Contador because he has been mentioned in connection with the Spanish blood-doping scandal known as Operation Puerto.
"Our basic position is that we don't want any rider from the Fuentes list," Frank Bertling said Wednesday.
Sports doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and seven other people were arrested in Madrid in May 2006 on suspicion of providing doping services that implicated more than 50 cyclists. A judge subsequently ruled that he could not charge anyone in the case because Spain's anti-doping law was not in force at the time of the arrests.
German authorities said Tuesday they received information from doping expert Werner Franke which he claims show Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was involved in doping.
Franke said he has documents from last year's Operation Puerto doping investigation in Spain which show that Contador had taken a testosterone booster and an asthma drug.
Contador, who hasn't failed a doping test, said July 28 his name mistakenly turned up in the Puerto file.
"I was in the wrong team at the wrong time and somehow my name got among the documents," Contador said, adding cycling's governing body corrected the mistake.
Bertling also said that Danish rider Michael Rasmussen and Italian cyclist Alessandro Petacchi are not welcome to compete in Hamburg.
Rasmussen was removed from the Tour while leading by his team Rabobank on July 25 because he had lied about his whereabouts during missed doping tests before the race.
Petacchi tested positive for an asthma drug following his victory in the 11th stage of the Giro d'Italia on May 23, but was cleared by the Italian cycling federation.
The Italian Olympic Committee, which had recommended a one-year ban for Petacchi, has appealed the ruling. A hearing for the appeal has been set for Saturday.
Two German public television networks _ ARD and ZDF _ stopped broadcasting the Tour after it became known that T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz tested positive for elevated testosterone levels during pre-Tour training on June 8.
Under pressure from ARD, the Hamburg event will increase the number of doping tests.
T-Mobile, the German telecommunications giant, is expected to announce Thursday whether it will continue to sponsor the team until the end of the current contract in 2010.
