UCI wants ban of between two to four years for Kreuziger, loss of results from March 2011

Governing body also requests fine of 770,000 euro plus costs

By Shane Stokes - October 29, 2014

The Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed Tuesday that it had initiated a procedure filed by the UCI and WADA against the clearing of Roman Kreuziger by the Czech Olympic Committee relation to charges of blood doping.

It outlined a range of penalities that the UCI hopes will be applied to the rider, including the stripping of results dating back over three years, a lengthy suspension and a file of over three quarters of a million euro.

“In appealing to the CAS, the UCI has requested that the decision issued on 22 September 2014 be set aside and replaced with a new decision sanctioning Mr Kreuziger with a period of ineligibility of between 2 and 4 years,” states CAS on its website.

“It further requests the disqualification of all competition results achieved from March 2011 until the commencement of the period of ineligibility as well as payment of a fine of EUR 770,000 and costs.”

According to CAS, the arbitration procedure is in progress. No specific dates have been given.

If the UCI and WADA ultimately win their appeal and Kreuziger loses his results from March 2011, those will include fifth overall and best young rider in the 2011 Giro d’Italia, stage 19 of the 2012 Giro, first in the 2013 Amstel Gold Race, third in that year’s Tour de Suisse plus the Clasica de San Sebastián and fifth overall in the Tour de France.

He would also lose this season’s results, including third overall in Tirreno-Adriatico, fifth in Strade Bianche and seventh in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

In what appears to have been a move to counter CAS’s news, Kreuziger’s lawyer issued an open letter today highlighting what he says are flaws in the UCI’s case against the rider. He has also suggested that the appeal to CAS is a witch hunt.

Larry Theobald

The photo of the two Saxo riders makes me wonder if the penalties ought to be extended to the race winner the dope cheat helped? Seems team management might take doping a LOT more seriously if the entire team faced penalties rather than just the individuals who are easily cast aside and replaced. Didn’t the winning team at TdF this year have a guy who just admitted to doping?
- http://www.cyclingTipsBlog.com cyclingTips
  
  I’ve often thought that it perhaps the best way to irradiate PED use is by penalising the whole team instead of just the individual. My gut feel is that this would bring about the social control within the peloton to truly stamp out doping.
  - Dave
    
    This is what happens with sporting penalties in most sports. When you’re a team you win together and you lose together.
    - http://www.cyclingTipsBlog.com cyclingTips
      
      The fact that cycling is this quasi-team sport makes it difficult. There’s no doubt that the winner of every race has done so because of the help of his or her team. But still only one person stands on the podium and is declared the winner, gets the prize money (officially), gets the glory, gets the UCI points, and everything else that comes along with it.
      - Tom Wells
        
        And whether the winner doped or not, if a member of the team doped then they still have an unfair advantage over the competition. A stronger team should be mean a stronger result…
      - Dave
        
        Cycling needs to decide once and for all whether it is a team sport or not, instead of continuing to sit on the fence.
        
        If they choose to make it a team sport, certain changes need to be made which reflect that. Testing the whole team of the stage winner and tour leader each day, and providing predictable consequences for a positive test, would be what is required in the area of anti-doping to reflect that.
        
        Cycling wouldn’t even need to be the world leaders to start getting it right - they could start by simply copying athletics where one member of the team getting busted causes the disqualification of the whole team. Where they could lead the world is in adding further sporting sanctions for the team:
        
        1. banning the team from the next WorldTour race
        
        2. from the next year’s edition of the race in which they tested positive
        
        3. not allowing the replacement of a doper on the team list until their suspension has expired.
    - neineinei
      
      In icehockey and football (soccer) two or even three players must test positive for a team to be disqualified in a championship for instance. The federations tend to only test two pr. team pr. match, if that.
      - Dave
        
        But how often would more than one rider on a cycling team get tested on the same day? Probably not often, given that tour leaders don’t usually have teammates winning stages on the same day and the rest would be down to random chance.
        
        That some other sports are just as bad is not a good excuse for cycling to stay on the same lazy path as it did in the Verbruggen/McQuaid days, but an opportunity for Brian Cookson to make some real improvements and demonstrate that there’s some substance behind his spin. I don’t think he has the stones to do it though, I’d love to be proven wrong though.
  - Larry Theobald
    
    Plenty will say it’s unfair to penalize a winner or entire team for the actions of a lone cheater, but it’s also unfair for a team to use cheaters to help their man win. What would happen if it turned out the race winner was the only clean guy on the team? He’d be helped to victory by cheaters who would then be tossed out when/if caught while HE gets to keep the prize money and trophy? How is that fair? Demonizing individual cheats, branding them lone wolves and tossing them from the sport just doesn’t work. Time for some new measures UCI!
Paulmapp

Couldn’t agree more. Chuck the team. How many times did we Cadel chase guys like Rasmusssen up and down dale exhausting himself only for him to get flung out of the tour later and a weakened Cadel drop down in the third week. Gotta be frustrating. Punish the team.
- neineinei
  
  Then BMC should have been penalized for that souigneur of theirs who got caught with loads of EPO and other doping products too.
  - Dave
    
    If cycling was treated as a team sport and the appropriate sporting penalties applied, Cadel would never have joined BMC. The risk to his career would not have justified the potential success of joining a team managed by so many pro-doping figures.