WADA appeals to CAS for longer bans for Johan Bruyneel and two other ex-US Postal team staff

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has announced that is to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to seek longer bans from sport against former US Postal Service team manager Johan Bruyneel and two of its staff.

In April, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) imposed a 10-year ban on Bruyneel and bans of eight years each to Dr Pedro Celaya and Jose “Pepe” Marti for their part  in the US Postal doping conspiracy.

All three were charged in June 2012 at the same time as Lance Armstrong, but unlike the former rider, stripped of results including seven Tour de France titles and banned for life, they challenged the accusations through arbitration.

The sanctions imposed by the AAA followed an arbitration hearing held in London, where Bruyneel lives, shortly before Christmas last year.

WADA says that in lodging the appeal with CAS, it “requests that consideration be given to longer sanctions for all three individuals involved in order to best protect athletes, and ensure a clean sport of cycling.”

It adds that its appeal is supported by world cycling’s governing body, the UCI, and by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which conducted the investigation, and that they “will provide support to WADA during this process.”

In its April decision, the AAA said that Bruyneel, who also managed Armstrong after his return to the sport in 2009 with Astana, the pair then moving to RadioShack, said the Belgian had trafficked performance enhancing drugs and to have encouraged riders to use substances such as EPO, testosterone and cortisone, and to undergo blood transfusions.

It added that he “was engaged in the allocation of team-related resources… causing a variety of prohibited doping substances and methods to be used expressly for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage for the teams and cyclists he managed in cycling events.”

The panel said Bruyneel, who has disputed its jurisdiction, personally “profited considerably from the successes of the teams and riders he managed during the relevant period.”