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Alessandro Petacchi handed two-year ban for blood dopingPetacchi beats Cavendish in Parma (picture Daniele Badolato, LaPresse, RCS Sport)

Alessandro Petacchi handed two-year ban for blood doping

Italian becomes highest profile rider sanctioned as a result of Operation Aderlass investigation
by Alex Bowden
Sat, Aug 24, 2019 16:35
5

Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi, who won Milan-Sanremo and the points jersey in all three Grand Tours, has been handed a two-year ban for blood doping. The retired Italian sprinter becomes the highest profile rider sanctioned as a result of the Austro-German blood doping investigation, Operation Aderlass.

Petacchi won six stages at the Tour de France, 22 at the Giro d’Italia and 20 at the Vuelta a Espana. He previously served a nine-month ban after testing positive for salbutamol in 2007.

In May, we reported that Petacchi was being investigated for alleged doping in 2012 and 2013, during a period when he rode for Lampre.

French and Italian newspapers linked him to Mark Schmidt, the former Gerolsteiner and Milram team doctor at the centre of Operation Aderlass, which first hit the headlines after arrests were made at February’s Nordic Skiing World Championships.

In June, that investigation led to Austrian cyclists Stefan Denifl and Georg Preidler being banned for four years by the Austrian anti-doping agency.

Petacchi initially denied having undergone illegal blood transfusions, but the UCI has now officially sanctioned him. The governing body said the Italian had accepted "the consequences" and would serve a two-year ban as well as being stripped of three stage victories in the 2012 Tour of Bavaria.

Petacchi’s ban takes effect from May 14, the date the investigation was opened against him, Slovenian Borut Bozic (retired) and Slovenia's Kristijan Koren and Croatian Kristijan Durasek – both of whom are still active but provisionally suspended.

Operation Aderlass
Alessandro Petacchi
Alex Bowden

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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5 comments

Avatar
awalker | 5 years ago
0 likes

Those Tour stage wins are clearly suspect.  Did he beat Cav into 2nd in any of them? Shouldn't those be credited to Cav now?

Avatar
Simon E | 5 years ago
1 like

So much for the 'clean' post-Armstrong era.

Avatar
Zebulebu replied to Simon E | 5 years ago
0 likes
Simon E wrote:

So much for the 'clean' post-Armstrong era.

Nobody thinks it's 'clean'. Like all elite sport. What it IS, is cleaner - much cleaner. Without the industrial strength team doping programs that uses to be the norm.

Avatar
levermonkey replied to Simon E | 5 years ago
1 like

Simon E wrote:

So much for the 'clean' post-Armstrong era.

There will always be those who will seek to gain an illegal advantage, it is human nature.

To cycling's credit it has put its hand up and publicly said, "Yes, we have a problem with cheating in our sport."

The problem is not the fact that cyclists are getting caught; it is the fact that other sports are not taking this problem seriously enough. They point and say, "We don't have the numbers being caught that cycling has." This results in cycling being percieved as a dirty sport but what is the alternative?

Let me illustrate. You have two towns with equal crime rates. Town A elects a sheriff who cracks down hard on the criminals whilst Town B elects a sheriff who sits in his office eating doughnuts. Over the next five years the crime in Town A drops to almost zero whilst the crime in Town B stays the same.

After five years the sheriffs are up for reelection. Which one gets reelected? The one with the high level of recorded crime (A) or the sheriff with very low recorded crime rate (B)?

Perception is not always the truth.

Avatar
EddyBerckx replied to levermonkey | 5 years ago
1 like
levermonkey wrote:

Simon E wrote:

So much for the 'clean' post-Armstrong era.

There will always be those who will seek to gain an illegal advantage, it is human nature.

To cycling's credit it has put its hand up and publicly said, "Yes, we have a problem with cheating in our sport."

The problem is not the fact that cyclists are getting caught; it is the fact that other sports are not taking this problem seriously enough. They point and say, "We don't have the numbers being caught that cycling has." This results in cycling being percieved as a dirty sport but what is the alternative?

Let me illustrate. You have two towns with equal crime rates. Town A elects a sheriff who cracks down hard on the criminals whilst Town B elects a sheriff who sits in his office eating doughnuts. Over the next five years the crime in Town A drops to almost zero whilst the crime in Town B stays the same.

After five years the sheriffs are up for reelection. Which one gets reelected? The one with the high level of recorded crime (A) or the sheriff with very low recorded crime rate (B)?

Perception is not always the truth.

This x1000

Sports that take the dope problem seriously are punished the most by people who like to claim they are against doping. It's not remotely a level playing field. May as well do as FIFA do and not bother.

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