Saturday, January 20, 2007

So who's the governing body for banned substances?

I thought it was WADA... It seems to be the French anti-doping agency (AFLD) and the French newspaper Le Monde right now. It's pretty bad when McQuaid has to find out about the Pereiro allegations by reading it in Le Monde... Le Monde reported Pereiro had traces of the controlled substance Salbutamol present in two urine samples. What they don't say, is he has a history of asthma and has a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) permitting him to use Ventolin to treat it... so, he's got a TUE for that substance (which was just a trace anyways)... so it's not a positive test... Not to sit here and just Bash, but then McQuaid issues a statement that Caisse d'Epargne and Pereiro didn't act professionally by not responding to this whole thing. What do you do? If you respond, you're guilty and if you don't you're guilty. So, what's wrong with not responding and not giving Le Monde something else to write about? When stuff like this happens, it kind of discredits much of what you've heard through the media. Then you got to wonder if stuff like this is getting out into the press before it's getting to top officials of the UCI, how much control is there over these positive tests? It just discredits everything...

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