Italy's top anti-doping prosecutor backtracks after claiming all cyclists are on drugs

Ettore Torri, the head of anti-doping at CONI, the Italian national Olympic committee, has apparently sought to backtrack on controversial remarks he made in an interview yesterday, when he said that he believed that all cyclists were using drugs and doping should be legalised, claiming his comments were merely him letting off steam.

Torri’s apology was reported in a statement published on CONI’s website after he was summoned to its Rome headquarters for a meeting earlier today with chairman Gianni Petrucci and general secretary Raffaele Pagnozzi.

The 78-year-old has been CONI’s chief anti-doping prosecutor for the past four years, during which period he has been involved in investigations of Italian cyclists such as Ivan Basso and Danilo di Luca, as well as 2009 Vuelta winner, the Spaniard Alejandro Valverde.

According to CONI’s statement, Torri maintained that his statements, instead of suggesting that doping be decriminalised, were in fact meant ironically, a reflection of someone who has fought for years against doping letting off steam, although certainly his comments reported yesterday seem to leave little scope for misinterpretation.

In an interview with The Associated Press in which he set out his controversial views, Torri insisted: “I’m not the only one saying it. Lately, all of the cyclists I’ve interrogated have said that everyone dopes.

“The longer I’m involved in this, the more I marvel at how widespread doping is,” he added. “And I don’t think it will be eradicated. Because it just evolves continuously. There are new substances coming out that can’t be tested for.”

Torri suggested that legalising doping might be the answer so long as it did not adversely affect riders’ health, saying: “It’s not fair when we single out one rider in a 100. If the other 99 have doped, too, but are not prosecuted, it’s not fair.”

Last week, shortly before the storm broke over Alberto Contador’s failed test for clenbuterol at the Tour de France and the news that Xacobeo-Galicia’s Ezequiel Mosquera and David Garcia had both failed drugs tests during the Vuelta, Pierre Bordry, head of France’s anti-doping agency the AFLD resigned, citing a lack of resources and political will to combat doping as among the reasons for his departure.

Like Bordry, Torri believes that there is still too much of an incentive for athletes to take performance enhancing drugs, saying: “As long as doping is a viable economic option, it’s always going to exist. It needs to be made so that it’s no longer worth it economically.”

He added that the development of new performance enhancing products and the use of micro-dosing meant that the authorities were always going to be a step behind the dopers, citing the example of AICAR, the which increases endurance and converts fast-twitch muscles to slow-twitch ones, for which a test has only just been developed.

“Anti-doping is always behind the dopers,” maintained Torri. “For example, anyone who used (AICAR) until yesterday got off. Every time we develop a test, we’ve already lost 50 percent of those who have doped with a substance.”

“There are always ways to use micro dosages that are not discovered in tests,” he continued. “These trainers are really good at their jobs, and they’re able to prescribe just enough of the drug that it remains under the banned levels,” he added.