ALBERTO Contador has been cleared of drug taking and is free to begin competing again.
This is either going to be the best news possible for the sport of cycling or the worst.
Contador, up until last year was indisputably the greatest stage racer of his generation with three Tour De France wins and victories in the Giro D’Italia and the Vuelta e Espana, completing a Grand Slam of cycling’s top races.
He was the poster boy, along with Mark Cavendish for a cleaner sport, free of the paranoia and regular drug test failures of the Armstrong days.
That was until, on course for his third Tour De France title last summer, he failed a drugs test for a trace sample of little known fat burning/muscle building drug clenbuterol.
What followed was a long and occasionally farcical examination of the case while Contador himself blamed everybody but himself for the positive test, including enraging the Spanish meat industry by claiming the clebuterol must of come from some contaminated beef.
Now the Spainard has been cleared after being given a judgement of having not taken the drug knowingly.
The problem now is that he was cleared not by the UCI, cycling’s governing body but by the Royal Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC).
It’s not for me to judge but surely they might have a vested interest in making sure that Contador is free to compete?
It’s not only me that’s asking questions.
In today’s (16/2/11) Times, Owen Slot describes the RFEC as “the Alberto Contador fan club” and UCI chairman Pat McQuaid no less has spoken out against political involvment in the case.
With the Armstrong case looming in the background like a monster ready to stamp all over the sport’s last two decades, it is essential that Alberto Contador is either completely clean or he is banned.
To give a decision which invites yet more criticism is going to bring further questions of over the sports integrity and until there is a definitive verdict, then cycling remains on probation.
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