ALBERTO CONTADOR

Alberto Contador is without doubt the best stage racer in cycling today. He won the first six Grand Tours (those of France, Italy and Spain) that he entered, and only lost last year's Tour de France in July because he had tried to win it after dominating the Giro in May, widely held to have been the toughest ever.

Now, however, he is out of the sport. Yesterday the Court of Arbitration in Sport gave him a 2-year ban for doping. At the 2010 Tour de France (which he won), a random doping test found that his urine contained a microscopic amount of the banned substance clenbuterol, a medication often given to cattle in order to beef them up. Contador's story was that it was due to a steak that he had eaten during the Tour, which had been brought up to France by a friend from Spain. The Spanish cycling federation freed him on the grounds that he had not knowingly ingested the banned substance. UCI, the world cycling body, appealed; and after a very long delay, CAS upheld their claim.

Unlike (say) EPO, clenbuterol is a funny substance within the anti-drug regime. First, the rules call for zero tolerance, rather than a minimum threshold; so any trace constitutes a breach. Secondly, although the drug is banned for use in livestock within the E.U., it is not elsewhere in the world. So some athletes - including cyclists - caught with it in their systems have been let off, because it happened in (say) Mexico. Contador's problem was that Spain is a country that bans it, and he could not plausibly demonstrate how the meat in question could have become contaminated.

A 2-year ban is often the kiss of death for a professional cyclist, not least because Contador will now be stripped of his victories in both the 2010 Tour and 2011 Giro. However, in this case, it has been backdated until 5 August 2010, meaning that he will be able to race again in 6 months' time. This will allow him to compete in the Vuelta - for which he must be the hot favourite - but not the Tour de France.

The relatively light ban suggests that CAS believed that there were some mitigating circumstances, presumably the fact that the recorded dosage was highly unlikely to have had any affect on Contador's performance. Expect calls for minimum thresholds to become more vocal in the future.

Walter Blotscher