Pound: Valverde case far from over
Alejandro Valverde’s successful challenge to ride in this year’s world championship road race should not be seen as an end to the doping investigation surrounding the Spanish cyclist, World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound said Thursday.
Valverde successfully fought an effort by the UCI to keep him from riding the world’s road race in Stuttgart in September after cycling’s international governing body said he was a suspect in the 18-month-old Operación Puerto case.
Valverde took his case to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, and overturned the ban. In a press conference at the WADA world conference in Madrid, however, Pound said the CAS decision doesn’t mean that Valverde is no longer a suspect.
"This case dealt with a very narrow question,” said Pound. “It was solely a challenge that he made to a decision not to let him start in the World Championships but that doesn't mean that the evidence that (the UCI) had to produce for that (case) has been completed.”
Pound and other WADA and UCI officials have been frustrated by efforts to pursue the Puerto case by Spanish judicial rulings that have put a stop to their disciplinary actions until the ongoing criminal investigation runs its course.
"We still have evidence coming from the documentation that is available to the UCI that would indicate this particular cyclist might have been involved in Operation Puerto," Pound said. “The records and blood bags were coded and that code has been broken."The judge has said that none of the evidence which is already available to all the parties, including us and the UCI, can be used for sports sanctions purposes until the criminal case is entirely finished,” he noted. "We are sitting up there with a whole bunch of information that we know exists but you are prevented from using it."
Earlier in the day, UCI President Pat McQuaid expressed frustration over the Valverde case and raised the issue in a private meeting with Spanish sports minister Jaime Lissavetzky.
McQuaid said that the UCI intends to pursue the Valverde case and several “other pending matters” when the governing body has the right to fully use evidence already in its possession.
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