Sanctions in Professional Cycling

In 2005 the Spanish Gaurdia Civil exposed a very sophisticated network for facilitating and providing illegal performance enhancement to endurance athletes.  The so-called Operación Puerto resulted in the seizure of several dozen bags of blood intended to be transfused back to their donors or treated with performance enhancing drugs then transfused back to their donors with the intention of manipulating blood to enhance physiological performance.  The practice of autologous blood transfusions, until recently, has had no reliable test for detection.  Because no reliable test has existed until 2008 it has likely been a very popular method of cheating.  The blood lab was located and operated out of Spain.  The case implicated several athletes, many professional cyclists, and two Spanish teams.  However, little more than scandal and negative press resulted from the case because transfusing blood for performance gains is not prohibited by the Spanish government.  Despite the Spanish prosecution of the athletes involved going nowhere some professional cyclists implicated have been connected to Operación Puerto and their national sporting governments imposed bans.

One rider who has been directly connected to Operación Puerto is Alejandro Valverde.  In 2008 while participating in the Tour de France he had a short stay in Italy.  During that time Italian anti-doping authorities obtained blood and/or urine samples from which they compared Alejandro Valverde’s blood to blood samples shared by Spanish authorities.  Valverde’s DNA matched DNA of at least 1 bag of blood; proving he had at least the intention at one time to transfuse blood in order to cheat.

After the positive math with the Operación Puerto blood the Italian sporting government promptly imposed a two year ban.  Due to the jurisdiction of the case the ban is currently limited to only competition in Italy.  Any further sanctions would require the cooperation of the Spanish cyclign federation, who have not imposed any bans or pursued the issue further.

With the Tour de France soon approaching the case has gained traction in the media because the race briefly crosses the French/Italian border.  With a two-year ban from competing in Italy Valverde, who is a favorite to do well, will be excluded from arguably the biggest/most important race in the world.  The exclusion raises a larger issue of whether or not the Italian ban should be extended into a world-wide ban.

Very few of the riders associated with Operación Puerto have been handed any kind of sanctions for their alleged or proven participation.  A fact that is disappointing, but raises many issues of fairness.  One reason for the unequal treatment is the way in which sanctions are handed out.  Each rider’s respective cycling federation is responsible for pursuing santions for participating in illegal performance enhancement practices.  Many countries simply have not pursued the issue; Italy is one exception.

A recent poll on the website Velonews asking readers, “Should the Italian ban of Alejandro Valverde be extended globally?’ resulted in an ambivalent 47/53 yes/no, respectively.  The issue raises several questions a couple of which revolve around the fairness of punishments from Operación Puerto, but also the purpose of the two year bans.  One could say the ban is a punishment and deterent for the riders who cheat or are prone to cheating.  On the other hand it is also an issue of fair competition for individuals not pursuing banned methods to improve their performance.  In the former I would argue Valverde should be banned.  Very damning evidence from the DNA match associated him with the intention to cheat.  For the latter I would argue the DNA match is also suggestive of previous cheating and possible future cheating.  In the interest of fair competition he should be excluded.  Perhaps the first purpose of bans to act as deterents would prevent Sr. Valverde from pursuing blood transfusions as a way to improve performance in the future.