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Chris Horner leads 2013 Vuelta after Stage 3 (Vuelta 2013 Unipublic:Graham Watson)USADA admits Chris Horner blunder: whereabouts was not communicated to testers
The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USDADA’s) last night exonerated Chris Horner of any wrong doing over officials’ inability to find him for an out-of competition doping test yesterday morning.
Testers arrived at the RadioShack team hotel yesterday morning only to find that Horner was not present as he’d moved to another hotel in order to spend the night with his wife.
As rumours swirled about Horner supposedly missing a test, the team published a confirmation email from USADA’s whereabouts system, demonstrating that Horner had notified the agency on Sunday morning of the hotel change.
USADA has conceded this, and said that the updated information did not reach the testers in time.
In a statement, the USADA said: "In response to public statements from Team RadioShack today concerning Chris Horner, USADA can confirm that we were coordinating an out-of-competition test with the Agencia Española de Protección de la Salud en el Deporte (AEA) while Mr. Horner was in Spain.
"Mr. Horner properly updated his whereabouts information in advance of the test attempt, but given that the information was received in the United States, the AEA doping control officer on the ground in Spain did not receive the updated information prior to arriving at the hotel.
"This is not considered a missed test and neither anti-doping organisation provided information to the media regarding this situation."
On Sunday, Chris Horner finished the Vuelta a España in the leader's jersey to became the oldest grand tour winner ever, at 41.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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15 comments
What I don't get is why didn't someone in his team at the hotel the testers turned up at give him a call and say 'bit of a problem, where are you?' Someone must have known the right hotel or a mobile number and been able to work out the simple logic of misses test = even if in right it will look horribly wrong. easier than team tactics to work out consequences
If this guy can book into a hotel with the missus the night after riding up every hill in Spain for three weeks then he must have enough testosterone coursing round his body already without having to cheat. God knows, I do a two hour spin on a Saturday morning and I can't even make it to Match of the Day without nodding off.
I don't think this could have possibly been more poorly timed for Horner. Enough people were already asking questions and even after his exoneration it sure won't help his defense
Yet you still felt compelled to add just 1 last post
One comment in and we've already implied he cheated, great work.
All this cynicism from the fans is the reason I cant be bothered to participate in online discussions anymore, if you hate pro cycling that much, dont watch it.
I too have made the vow never to contribute to discussions online....wait, what? Oh.
I am not contributing to this discussion and nor is my wife!
You just have. It wasn't that hard was if?!
Who did then?
I'd bet the hotel(s) involved.
Well thats him off the hook then.
Phew - thats a relief - such a fine upstanding athlete can now take the plaudits he so richly deserves.
I wonder if he will be announcing a Vinokourov type retirement now too?
This is such horse shit, you have some proof he took drugs, FFS he did EVERYTHING right, EVERYTHING that was asked of him and yet you still slur him with drugs because the USDA messed it up, jesus give the guys a break, these bullshit views are not helping cycling.
I agree he did everything by the book. Brilliant ride, gave an old boy like me some hope! Lets just drop all the suspicion of everyone who dares to put in a good performance. Nuff said!
He did everything by the book....'The Secret Race'. It is all there. Including the 'change the address at the last minute' malarkey. Team RadioShack's mock indignation is laughable. They're playing the game, but did they at any point try to point the testers in the right direction?
I'm glad people here think can still discuss this stuff in an intelligent fashion. It's important to be able to discuss this stuff because OTHERWISE YOU'D JUST LET THE LIKES OF LA GET AWAY WITH IT.
People prefer to believe in fairytales!