Doping Cycle

Forget injections - meat is the new way to get your illegal performance enhancers!

Three time Tour De France winner Alberto Contador blamed "contaminated meat" for his positive doping test. That may work if you're talking about how you got HIV, but banned substances? The bad piece of filet mignon, he says, was to blame for a "very small concentration" of the banned substance clenbuterol that was found his urine sample on July 21 during the most recent Tour.

"The idea of anyone questioning my Tour victory does not worry me," the Spanish cyclist said. "I am not going to let something like this destroy everything I have done." You mean cheating?  No, don't let that stand in your way. Contador was provisionally suspended by the International Cycling Union (the sport's governing body, not a small eastern European nation) after a World Anti-Doping Agency lab determined both A and B samples were positive. The anti-doping lab director said of the results, "Clenbuterol is a substance that has been used for over 20 to 30 years...It is not anything new. Nobody has ever suggested it is something you can take inadvertently."

Contador said the beef was brought across the border from Spain to France by a Spanish cycling organizer, Jose Luis Lopez Cerron, during a Tour rest day and at the request of the team's chef. Ah, the finger of blame rests with this meat rustler.  Cerron said he was a friend of the chef, who had complained of poor quality meat at the hotel where the team was staying. The tainted filet mignon was bought for the team in the Spanish border town of Irun. Contador and four other Astana teammates ate the beef on July 20, though he was the only one who underwent a doping test on July 21. Naturally, he ate more of the meat that day, explaining that although it wasn't normal to eat steak a day before racing, "it was too good to waste". Especially if it has clenbuterol!

Clenbuterol has anabolic properties that build muscle while burning fat. It is commonly given to horses to treat breathing problems, and medicinally it is used to treat asthma. Like stimulants such as amphetamine or ephedrine, it can increase the heart rate and body temperature. Clenbuterol is sometimes given to cows, pigs and other animals to increase their growth rate, but how much would they have give a cow for it to make it through to show up in a person who ate it?  Really, think about it.  You could take any average person eating the same farm's meat and should get a similar result...if that nonsense was true.

Cycling has long been plagued with doping scandals. Within hours of Contador's case becoming public, the UCI announced that two Spanish riders failed drug tests during the Spanish Vuelta in September, testing positive for hydroxyethyl starch, which increases blood volume. There has been no indication yet if Contador will be banned or stripped of his latest Tour title. If they did, Contador would be just the second cyclist to be forced to relinquish it - Floyd Landis, was stripped of his 2006 Tour title after a positive test. For years, Landis denied doping but admitted this spring that he used performance-enhancing drugs - and you can expect the same out of Contador.