Problems at the Tour?
The Aderlass doping inquiry entered the public domain when Austrian police performed raids on the Nordic World Ski Championships in Seefeld in Tirol in early 2019. Eight professional cyclists have already been implicated. Stefan Denifl, Georg Preidler, Pirmin Lang and Danilo Hondo have confessed to using banned substances. Alessandro Petacchi, Kristijan Koren, Kristijan Durasek and Borut Bozic have received bans for doping as a result of the Operation Aderlass inquiry.
On the basis of additional information, the UCI decided to re-analyse samples from the 2016 and 2017 seasons. The Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF) will focus on the 2017 Tour in detail. They are looking for traces of an unnamed doping product of American origin.
“At that time, there were a number of banned substances that were not available on the regular pharmaceutical market and for which there were no optimal detection methods in the labs. In the meantime, those methods have been improved,” Peter Van Eenoo of the Ghent anti-doping laboratory told Het Nieuwsblad.
We’ll keep you updated as the story develops.
