Flies and Bikes Blog

It's been quite a few weeks (or perhaps months) since dear Valv. (Piti) - aka Alejandro Valverde's doping case graced this blog.  Today, CyclingNews.com reports that Alejandro Valverde has lost the final appeal against his doping ban (Valverde Loses Final Appeal). This of course follows one of the few instances in which DNA fingerprinting led to a correlation between a pro cyclist and ablood bag recovered from Dr Fuentes' stash.  I guess the DNA profiling was felt to be rather incontrovertible.  Oh, and the barely concealed code name on the bags. He's now banned until the end of 2011.  He was formally banned from the first of January this year, but kept on racing for a while.  But the bottom line is - why couldn't the Spanish authorities succeed in getting more of the blood bags sampled for DNA fingerprinting?  How many riders got away with it?  And is it fair to clobber just a few of the cyclists involved?