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UCI defends EPO test
The UCI has upheld positive dope tests against Vuelta a España winner Roberto Heras and vehemently rejected complaints about its testing procedure.
In a statement released late Friday, the UCI expressed its "full satisfaction with the way the procedures relating to this case were carried out and reaffirms its unconditional confidence in the method used to trace EPO."
Heras tested positive for erythropoeitin after the 2005 Vuelta's 20th-stage time trial. On Friday a Spanish laboratory detected EPO in his second B sample.
The 31-year-old Spaniard, who faces a two-year ban, insisted he had never taken a banned product and claimed there had a been a mix-up in the laboratory.
Heras faces dismissal from his team, Liberty Seguros, after being suspended following the first positive test. But Liberty said Friday it was waiting for the UCI's conclusions regarding Heras’s charges. The UCI said it was now up to the Spanish cycling federation's disciplinary procedure to deal with the case.
But it stood by the EPO testing method, introduced by the UCI in 2001 when there were still doubts about its reliability, underlining support today from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).
The UCI said a climate of suspicion that damaged the image of cycling had been whipped up around Heras's case and insisted there was an "unacceptable" attempt to undermine the credibility of its "most important" anti-doping tool.
"The positive results since its introduction, until the latest case of Roberto Heras, prove without doubt that the battle against the scourge of EPO must be pursued, but above all demonstrate how effective the checks are," the UCI statement said.
"The repeated accusations made against other riders who are submitted to the same test are therefore pure speculation."
The UCI has also come under pressure amid claims that some riders slip through the net, especially since French sports daily L'Equipe earlier this year raised doubts about seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
The cycling body appointed an expert last month to examine the allegation that the 34-year-old American icon tested positive six times during cycling's flagship event in 1999.
Armstrong, who retired this year, has vigorously denied allegations of doping.
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