EPO

In a week in which the Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed the ban of one rider, Alejandro Valverde, from racing in Italy, Riccardo Riccò is preparing to return to the sport after serving out his own suspension.

The former Saunier-Duval-Scott rider, who tested positive for EPO variant CERA during the 2008 Tour de France, in which he won Stage 6, was suspended for two years, subsequently reduced on appeal to 20 months due to his co-operation.

World Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, has announced the provisional suspension of Spanish rider Alberto Fernandez De La Puebla after traces of EPO were found in a urine sample taken in September from the cyclist, who rides for the Fuji-Servetto team.

Two months after Danilo Di Luca failed a drug test for EPO the UCI has announced that another LPR Brakes rider has been provisionally suspended following a failed drugs test for EPO. Gabriele Bosisio failed the test following an out of competition test on September 2.

This second testing failure won't do anything for the reputation of the LPR Team which was viewed with suspicion by some for employing convicted dopers Di Lucca and the sprinter Alessandro Petacchi, and that was before Di Lucca's fall from grace this summer.

The UCI have hit back at a report from the French anti-doping agency, the AFLD which apparently suggests that the UCI consistently favoured the Astana team at this year's Tour de France labelling the accusations "groundless" and accusing AFLD boss Pierre Bordry of courting publicity. It also suggests that the UCI will look for a "neutral partner" with which to conduct doping controls at the 2010 Tour. 

Spanish UCI ProTour team Euskaltel-Euskadi has said that it will continue to stand by its rider Mikel Astarloza, despite the confirmation of his positive test for EPO announced after this year’s Tour de France following analysis of the B sample.

Astarloza, who won Stage 16 of the race and finished 11th overall, received a provisional suspension on 31 July after an A sample taken in an out-of-competition test on 26 June, before the Tour began,  was found to be positive – or, as Euskaltel-Euskadi describes it, “non-negative”.

Former Tour de France runner-up Andreas Kloeden underwent an illegal blood transfusion during the 2006 race according to the results of an independent commission.

The two-year probe by the University of Freiburg, also reported doping with the banned blood booster EPO was systematic within Kloeden’s T-Mobile team from 1995.

The university’s three-man panel concluded that two doctors, Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid, implemented a blood-doping programme within Team Telekom and its successor T-Mobile without the knowledge of the university.

ITALIAN cyclist Leonardo Piepoli has been handed an immediate ban after testing positive for a banned substance at last year’s Tour de France.

The Italian Olympic Committee's anti-doping tribunal said the two-year ban will end on January 25, 2011.

Piepoli, who won the 10th stage of the Tour de France, tested positive on July 4 and July 15 for CERA, an advanced version of the endurance-enhancing hormone EPO, according to the Associated Press.

Bernard Kohl, the winner of this year's King of the Mountains jersey at the Tour de France yesterday became the latest and most high profile rider to be nabbed for micro-dosing Cera – a type of EPO. Kohl was caught by the French anti-doping agency (AFLD) which has been re-testing blood samples from this year's Tour. Kohl joins his Gerolsteiner team-mate Stefan Schumacher, and Leonardo Piepoli as riders revealed to have been doping at this year's Tour.