Update 5/1/07 — Discovery team says “Arrivederci Basso“
The Discovery Channel pro cycling team did great at the Tour de Georgia without Italian cyclist Ivan Basso — 3 stage wins and the overall title. That might be a look of things for the near future.
The team on Wednesday asked Basso not to race pending a hearing into a new doping investigation by the Italian Olympic Committee. That casts an uncertain pall over his season; the Giro d'Italia is coming up in May and the Tour de France is in July.
It's that off-again on-again muddle started with Spain's Operacion Puerto blood doping investigation that broke right before the 2006 Tour de France.
According to a press release posted at Paceline (free membership), the Discovery Channel cycling fan site:
“Team management at Tailwind Sports has requested that Italian rider Ivan Basso not compete pending further information in a new investigation coming out of Italy. The Italian Cycling Federation and Italian Olympic Committee conducted a full review last fall of Basso’s implication in the “Operacion Puerto” affair, occurring prior to the start of the 2006 Tour de France, and found no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Kind of an odd first paragraph for the statement, as it says Basso has been asked not to compete, even though a “full review” last fall found “no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
That could be because the Italian authorities did not have all the evidence, namely bags of blood seized from a Spanish doctor's possession. The bags were labelled “Birillo”, the name of Basso's dog. Investigators never suspected it was the blood of Basso's pet, however, but couldn't get a DNA test from Basso.
The Spanish judge in the case wouldn't let go of the evidence at the time. Now that he has ruled that the Spanish target of the probe cannot be prosecuted, the evidence seized in the case has been going to different countries of cyclists implicated in the probe.
More at CyclingNews.
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