CyclingNews.com reports that Thomas Dekker is going to fight to clear his name. In comments attributed to an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Dekker said:
“This should not be the end of my cycling career,” he said.
“This is a very strange story,” Dekker told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. When he returned after a final training ride before traveling to the Tour, he received a phone call from Anne Gripper, the UCI’s anti-doping manager. “She told me that I had tested positive for EPO in December 2007. I listened to the whole story. Then I just about hit the ground.”
The 24-year-old said that he finds it “all very strange. I do not know exactly what is going on.” Dekker also questioned the timing of the matter. “This story pops up on the very day that I leave for the Tour.
“How can a sample be negative in 2007 and now suddenly gets tested again? That is wrong.”
Then again, WADA tells a slightly different story, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur story at Monsters and Critics.com.
However, the World Anti-Doping Agency ordered the retest due to suspicious blood levels over the past month.
‘We have been watching Dekker for quite a while and conducted retests with new methods of his frozen samples in Cologne,’ said Enrico Carpani, spokesman of the ruling cycling body UCI.
According to CyclingNews.com, Dekker released a statement in which he claims to have a letter from Dr. Mario Zorzoli of the UCI which states:
“This is to confirm that all test results of 2008 that are known to the UCI show that the blood values of Thomas Dekker…did not exceed any limits which would have required the imposition of a declaration of incapability under UCI’s current regulations.”
Dekker contacted Zorzoli after rumors of irregularities in his blood tests surfaced in 2008. Zorzoli’s letter refers to tests conducted for the biological passport in 2008. Whether Dekker’s test results from an out-of-competition test conducted shortly before Christmas in 2007 may be another matter. Dekker, however, claims that Zorzoli’s letter proves that there were no problems with his blood values.
Dekker also takes issue with the retesting of urine samples. The retesting appears to have suggested that Dekker used Dynepo, a second-generation blood boosting drug based on EPO. ”It is now apparent to all that new standards are being applied to older, previously tested samples found to be negative,” the cyclist said.
The crux of the UCI’s allegations seems to stem from retesting of Dekker’s December 2007 urine sample. While the UCI is within their rights to retest a sample that is less than eight years old, and while Dekker’s biological passport data may have led to the retesting, one question remains: How did the lab conducting the original test results originally determine that the sample was negative for EPO and it’s related drugs, and how did they then come to a different conclusion at this time?
It’s not as if Dynepo wasn’t detectable back in December 2007. It was. So the lab should have caught Dekker’s use on the first go `round (assuming that Dekker was actually using the drug). Is this, as Dekker claims, a case where standards were lowered in order to “catch” more cheats? And if so, what it the scientific basis for lowering those standards.
Whatever the answers to those questions, I hope Dekker has a lot of money to spend. As we saw in a previous case, the anti-doping authorities are not hesitant to spend whatever it takes (and do whatever it takes) to win a doping conviction. Before he actually fights the charges, he needs to carefully consider whether he can truly afford this fight.
Innocent or guilty, the deck is stacked against him. He may be better advised to just take the sanction, spend the next two years training hard, and come back when his suspension is over. In the meantime, he’ll have all that money he would have spent on lawyers.
On the flip side, if he follows that advice and he’s innocent, the system will go unchallenged. It’s a tough choice to make, and not one for those with a weak stomach. But he may not be the only one making such a choice. To steal a line from an old song …
How long can this keep going on?
Looks like the annual ritual of doping cases that emerge on the eve of the Tour de France is well on its way to achieving Puerto-like impact on the 2009 edition of cycling’s most storied race. That is, this report is to be believed.
L’Equipe is reporting (at least, that’s what a number of other news agencies are saying, but good luck finding the article on the L’Equipe web site) that there could be between four and seven doping cases to emerge between now and the time the Tour begins in Monaco a couple of days hence. The cases, which are not based on the UCI’s biological passport program, apparently stem from samples collected during the Tour of Romandie and the Tour de Suisse.
So far, the names of riders affected by the rumored test results have not been identified in print. So it’s unclear if the alleged miscreants are big names within the sport, or domestiques working for the big names. Either way, if the report is true, a number of teams may be reshuffled within the next couple of days.
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