Alberto Contador: The Noose Tightens

The Associated Press has reported that the WADA accredited laboratory at Cologne, Germany has found metabolites of a common plasticizer found in bags used in intravenous transfusions in the Tour de France urine samples provided by Alberto Contador. If true, the claim by Alberto Contador that he ate a clenbuterol tainted stake provided by a friend to the Astana cycling team seems nothing more than a preposterous fable.

Metabolites of plasticizer di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) were found in samples provided by Alberto Contador on July 20, 2010 at eight times the normal limit. On July 21, 2010 during the second rest day of the Tour de France, Alberto Contador tested positive for minute amounts of clenbuterol; a finding that anti-doping expert Rasmus Damsgaard claims could possibly have been a result of a transfusion of tainted blood stored during a out-of-competition period between races. A blood transfusion used during the race would boost oxygen supply (red blood cells transport oxygen) a common tactic employed by cyclists to gain a competitive advantage. Autologous transfusions of stored blood of one cyclist transfused into the same cyclist has no known laboratory test.

The perfect crime: or one would surmise, unless the criminal was a very careless person? Apparently, Alberto Contador was a very careless person. The WADA accredited laboratories are perfecting the detection of deception by searching for analogues of storage vessels like plastic bags; metabolites of plasticizers; illegal substances! One would surmise that Alberto Contador and those who possibly assisted him would have examined the purity of the blood prior to transfusion!

Indeed, the tainted meat fabrication, as such, seems more incredible by the second. Experts in meat contamination claim that if clenbuterol was introduced into an animal that most of the drug would be stored in the liver, that the amount of clenbuterol used in the animal to produce the positive test found in Mr. Contador would have killed the animal outright, and that it would be impossible to test positive for clenbuterol by eating a contaminated stake!

Not knowing all the circumstances of this case and not wanting to sound like Dick Pound; I will not expostulate guilt and guillotine. But the facts do tend in a direction probably not to the liking of Mr. Contador and his legal team. The results of the plasticizer test results could be challenged as unreliable or as invalid; and some people have suggested that that the urine could be stored for the next seven years as insurance in case some new test is developed; what rubbish!

Sounds to me like another case of denial, denial, denial! Alberto Contador should come to his senses and think! millions of dollars in legal fees! two years fighting the anti-doping agencies! Bad Karma! If you are guilty, confess! The Ivan Basso road is much easier than the Floyd Landis trail. Do you wish to be regarded as persona non grata for the rest of your life?

Confess and most of us will forgive you; lie and we will never forgive. Ask Floyd Landis.