Flies and Bikes Blog

Since the judgement was sent down (finally) on Alberto Contador's clenbuterol case, quite a few stories have emerged detailing commentators' views on the matter.  The other day the Pez Cycling news website featured a comment article with which I pretty much agree (The Contador Case: What's Missing)

In the welter of knee jerk reactions to judge/condemn Contador and/or criticize the UCI, the real issues of this situation are being missed [...]

The author does, I think make valid points about whether Contador's guilt has been established beyond reasonable doubt, and adds to this the oddly variable sanctions following clenbuterol positives that have  been applied to athletes in a variety of sports (see for example this case of youth footballers in Mexico). I would add my often-stated position that any system where a positive result can be returned for any level level of a proscribed substance, even where the level is below the sensitivity required of a testing lab must necessarily be unfair as whether a sample comes up positive becomes a lottery depending on which lab the sample was sent to for analysis.  This is an issue that will return again and again.