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Updated at 3:58 a.m., Thursday, April 24, 2008

Cycling: Anti-doping efforts called a hoax

Associated Press

PARIS — A French medical adviser facing prison time for inciting cyclists to cheat with drugs says efforts to fight doping are a "hoax," and that the market for banned products is in "full expansion."

Bernard Sainz said in an interview published Thursday that he hoped authorities would crack down on "the real culprits" — saying drug labs are now producing new versions of the oxygen booster EPO without facing prosecution.

"I think public authorities want to make an example out of me to today show zero tolerance (about drug use), when in reality, the fight against doping is a hoax," he was quoted as saying in the daily Le Parisien.

The BALCO scandal in the United States, he said, shows that "the market for doping products is in full expansion."

Sainz spoke from his horse farm in northwestern Normandy, where he is awaiting a ruling on his appeal of an 18-month prison sentence handed down by a Paris court earlier this month.

He was convicted on charges of "incitement to doping" and illegally practicing medicine in 1998 and 1999 _ during and after the 1998 Festina affair at the Tour de France in which police found a stash of performance-enhancing drugs in a team car, plunging the race into crisis.

Sainz was accused of providing testosterone and other performance-enhancers to cyclists. He has repeatedly denied the charges, arguing that he was only providing homeopathic therapy.

The French government wants to stiffen its legal arsenal to fight doping after a string of recent scandals at the Tour that have marred the reputation of cycling's premier event. A parliamentary bill is planned that would make it a crime to possess doping products, expanding a current ban on trafficking.