Disgraceful. What an utter farce.

He proved at the Giro last year that he can be head & shoulders above everyone else when on top-form and he must be one of the most tested athletes in the world - it would be madness to dope.

Many people/experts have come forward to say that the amount of Clenbuterol found in his system would have conferred no advantage whatsoever and that it could only have been caused by ingestion of tainted meat.

If that sample had been sent to a regular WADA lab they wouldn't have even detected it, as it was such a miniscule amount. The Cologne lab where it was tested is able to detect quantities up to 400 times lower than WADA stipulates.

It is so unfair and unjust for him :(

The guy cheated - end of. The only disgrace is that he's allowed to race again - and as early as August :^S

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

I'm going to try find a steak for lunch!

I wonder if he'll spit his chewy steak out and 'leave' the sport as threatend...???!!!

i agree with planeetx, a banned substance no matter how miniscule the amount is a banned substance.

The story of 'tainted meat' was always a hard one to swallow (pardon the pun!)

He has had a fair trial & has been found guilty, end of.

@garysan - that's exactly what i thought with regards to the 400 times lower figure and the fact such a tiny amount would have made no difference to performance .. obviously there must be more to it i guess...

None of us will ever know if he took it by accident or intentionally but personally, i dont think he would have cheated intentionally .. he was the best rider at the time, why would he have taken such a risk.

The term of the 'ban' is weird too; in essence he's only really baned from now (Feb 2012) until August 2012 - that's 6 months on my Calendar, not 2 years, as he has been riding right through last year.I'm a huge Alberto fan - anyone can see he's a unique talent - this whole thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth (no pun intended), not only for Contador fans, but for all Cycling fans. The Governiong Bodies of World Cycling are a joke....

The key part is the blood transfusion theory, if you accept that could have happened then it makes perfect sense why he had a trace amount. The transfusion theory logic is he was taking clenbuterol early season and, presumably assuming he'd left enough time to get it out of his system, he took blood for later use during the TdF. During the rest day on the TdF he used that stored blood (giving him much better recovery) but it still had trace amounts of clenbuterol in it which was detected in the following day's test.

To me that's a much more logical explanation of what happened (and explains the minute traces which wouldn't have helped him had he actually just taken a dose of clenbuterol during the TdF) as opposed to he had a dodgy steak transported hundreds of miles from a place no one could remember.

Autologous doping is still virtually impossible to detect, unless the cheater gets sloppy as in this case and likely still goes on a lot in the peloton.

never mind about the Clenbuterol for a minute, plasticisers were detected in his sample with indicate transfusion bags, or......did he forget to take shrink wrap of his steak before he ate it?.......pleeeeeeeeze!

Irrespective of whether it's contaminated food or blood doping, is it not the case that the athlete is responsible for what enters his body ?!!

And unfortunately if it was meat that Bert ate, then that's tough on him, but same result, he's responsible !!

Loooonnnngg time coming, and fair verdict imo .....

It's a shame the sport has to take this as another blow from those who see cycling and instantly relate it to doping.

Congrats to Andy Schleck, no more the 'Nearly Man' of the past two years. Must be a hollow victory though.

Well, heigh-ho, did we ever expect any other result? Unfortunately the logic is impeccable, he ought to and now must, pay the price for doping.

I can't see why he should be deemed "a cheat his whole career", RT, in fact, if he were so minded, this is the kind of post that could get you deep in the shit, unless you have legal-quality evidence to back you up. Bikeradar would be exposed too, which wouldn't make them very pleased with you either.

IF ANY SPORTS PERSON IS FOUND TO HAVE TAKEN PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS THEY SHOULD FACE A LIFETIME BAN!

BY DOPING UP THEY CONCLUSIVELY SHOW UTTER CONTEMPT FOR THEIR CHOSEN SPORT, THEIR TEAM MATES AND FELLOW COMPETITORS.

PDC

It seems you have to be a lawyer & chemist to follow road racing.

It's even more tedious than F1.

For me the presence of the plasticiser in his blood is hard to explain away whilst maintining his innocence - would have loved for him to be clean but it doesn't smell right. If Lance, Cav or Usain Bolt ever got done as drug cheats I would struggle to watch sport anymore.

About time too! the only 'joke' here is that it took so long to be concluded which allowed the cheat to continue racing, sad sad day :-(

Experts in sports physiology tell us that Contador produced superhuman power levels during some of his most memorable performances; the stage that is often mentioned is the arrival in Verbier where he would have been burning up 5 litres of pure oxygen per minute. The only other cyclists in history at anywhere near the same power levels have either been caught cheating or are strongly suspected to have been cheating. I think Contador was living on borrowed time.

That is a 6 month ban, not 2 years at all.

About time, BUURRP!

I think it's a fair decision - the rules are the rules, and while we'll probably never know whether Contador intentionally doped or not, they have to be followed to the letter otherwise we'll never get anywhere. What disturbs me most in this case though is the black & white, lynch-mob mentality of some people, e.g. millook above. Quote "if any sports person is found to have taken performance enhancing drugs they should face a lifetime ban". Really? How about perfectly legitimate ones, such as caffeine? And how about if an illegitimate one is taken unintentionally in a tiny quantity due to a contaminated supplement (it does happen), isn't a lifetime ban just a tad severe in that case? In the latter case (where it may be impossible to prove either way whether it was intentional or not) there needs to be a sufficient deterrent (such as a two year ban), but a lifetime ban would be overkill. However, If someone in today's climate (i.e. not the 90s when pros had huge amounts of pressure on them to dope) can be shown to have taken a banned substance intentionally to enhance performance, then yes, I'd ban them for life. So I'd ban Millar for two years (old school doper) and Contador for two years (no proof), but someone like Ricco - lifetime ban without a doubt.

This is a sad day for all sport not just cycling. This, and the pursuit of Lance Armstrong, has become a Witch Hunt by people trying to make a name for themselves on the back off others. If the WADA were really serious they would have pursued all the ‘unknown’ blood samples discovered in Spain, but no. Why? Because that have upset the big money men involved in Football and the other ‘main stream’ sports suspected of being involved.

Let’s see what happens during the Olympics this year.

I was just reading the CAD document (the best bits of the 400 pages). What's strange to me is that they seem to think the adverse finding was a result of a contaminated supplement. The don't believe that he had a blood transfusion or ate contaminated meat. Apparently this is grounds for a sanction, which seems a bit harsh.

Didnt Greg Ruzedski (or however you spell it) test positive because of a contaminated supplement? No action was takan as far as I remember.

Scarponi promoted to 1st in the Giro. Can anyone else see the irony?!

So, someone buys a steak somewhere in Northern Spain, drives across the Franco-Spanish boarder, gives the steak to Alberto and he eats it. All this without knowing where the meat has come from, during the TdF.

Just one steak, the person doesn't bring any others for his hardworking team mates, who have help him win grand tours. Or if he did bring steak for the others they were from a different heard of cows. Because a farmer would dope all his heard not just one cow.

Just bad luck for Alberto....

YEAH RIGHT.

Look on the bright side Bertie, will give u some quality time with your Budgies!!!!!!!

check the ingredients in that trill tho!

The guy passed a lie detector on the blood transfusion issue. Furthermore, an expert shot that plasticiser assay out of the water. There is a reason why it's not an approved assay. In fact, the panel concluded that it was unlikely that the compound entered his system via a blood transfusion.

They reach a slightly strange conclusion. They claim the most likely source of the compound was a contaminated nutritional supplement that wasn't issued by the team. They suggest that the tainted meat argument may have been used because taking a contaminated food supplement is, apparently, sanctionable. CAS applied the letter of the law. If I was him and IF I didn't cheat, I'd be gutted.

When Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson benefited the most. Now with Contador found guilty Schleck got what he wanted.

So, if 9/11 can be staged and fooled the people of the world, what is a clenbuterol contamination? Its like a planting a Semtex compared to dropping a nuclear bomb.

Don't rule out sabotage in this case. Smelled like it?????

@mohdito - You completely undermine your argument by your analogies... Maybe that's your intention and you are really trying to discredit any suggestions that Contador was given something spiked (not impossible of course) because it was you who did it :-). Now there's a loony conspiracy theory for you..

OMG talk about no sense of perspective!

@ neeb - You are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine. Have a good life!!

OK ...

Have I got this right?

They accepted that he didn't take anything deliberately.

They accepted that the amount that he accidentally took would have had no effect on his performance.

They banned him.

Or am I missing something?