GEELONG, Australia,(Reuters)-Spain’s government should recognise it faces a doping problem in cycling and do more to eradicate it, International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid said on Saturday, as another Spanish cyclist was provisionally suspended for a positive test.
Olympic cross country cycling medallist Margarita Fullana became the fourth Spanish cyclist to be suspended in three days after she returned a positive test for banned blood-booster erythropoietin (EPO).
The UCI announced a provisional ban on Thursday for Tour de France champion Alberto Contador for a positive test for a small quantity of the anabolic agent clenbuterol, a result the rider blamed on food contamination.
On the same day the UCI announced Tour of Spain runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera and team mate David Garcia Da Pena had tested positive for banned substances.
“The government needs to first of all recognise there is a problem and I don’t know that they’ve actually recognised it as a problem,” McQuaid told reporters at the road world championships in Geelong on Saturday.
“Fifty percent of our… I don’t know what the percentage is but a large percentage of our doping cases come from Spain and there doesn’t seem to be — so far — the will to tackle that in Spain and that will needs to come from the government down.
“But I hope that they would take note and realise that something needs to be done.
“Cycling’s an important sport in Spain. The sport deserves the support of the government into trying to ensure they can completely clean their act up.”
FIGHT FOREFRONT
A spokesman for the Spanish government’s sports council (CSD) said on Saturday he had no direct reaction to McQuaid’s comments but noted that CSD chief Jaime Lissavetzky had recently been re-elected to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) executive committee.
“Spain has been, is, and will continue to be in the forefront of the fight against doping,” the spokesman said.
WADA has expressed frustration in the past with Spain’s judicial authorities, who have declined to share evidence collected in doping probes with sporting and anti-doping bodies.
WADA, the UCI and the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) asked for access to evidence from Spain’s highest-profile doping case, known as Operacion Puerto, but were rebuffed by the courts, who argued that the material could not be released while the legal process was continuing and that doing so might infringe the rights of those implicated in the investigation.
The raft of suspensions in cycling in recent days has also rocked the road world championships in the port city of Geelong and has harmed cycling’s fight to cast off its image as sport riddled with drug cheats.
McQuaid conceded that doping remained a problem in the sport in general but defended the UCI’s efforts to stamp it out, and instead put the blame on team managers he said had failed to provide adequate support to riders.
“Quite a few of the team managers and team directors maybe are not taking their responsibility enough.
“They tend to leave the responsibility to the athlete. They say, ‘Well, these athletes are living in different parts of the world and we can’t control them 24 hours a day,.’“
“I don’t fully accept that. I think they do need to control their athletes more, they do need to know who their athletes are meeting. They do need (to know) even more during events what their athletes are doing.
“And if things like blood transfusions or whatever are going on in the team, ultimately the manager is to blame for that.”
