Flies and Bikes Blog

Cyclingnews has more on the Alejandro Valverde case (Swiss Court Dismisses Valverde Appeal | Cyclingnews.com).  Valverde has been implicated in the Operación Puerto blood doping ring.  The Spanish investigation was suspended because Spanish law didn't specifically prohibit this activity as criminal at the time.  However, this didn't stop the Italians' enthusiasm for pursuing the case and having matched Valverde's DNA to the blood in the bags labelled 'Valv. (Piti)', CONI banned him from racing in Italy for two years.  This of course includes any races (such as last year's Tour de France) which cross into Italy. Valverde appealed to CAS - but that was rejected.  It also turns out that he appealed to the Swiss Court of Civil Rights.  It's not clear to me why he's appealed to the Swiss court (unless he has a Swiss licence, perhaps), but that appeal failed, apparently because it was lodged before the CAS verdict was issued.  Apparently Valverde's appeal was based on his claim that

[...] that one of the arbitrators on the panel, Ulrich Hess, was not neutral because he had worked for the World Anti-Doping Agency.

So, a bit of a non-story in this long-running saga.  None of the appeals seem to relate to the accuracy of the crucial claim: that the Valv. (Piti) blood has a DNA match to Valverde.