LUSAIL, Qatar (AFP) — American team Garmin-Barracuda won Monday’s second
stage of the Tour of Qatar, a 11.3km time trial at the Lusail motorcycle track.

Belgian Tom Boonen of the Omega Pharma-Quick Step, winner of Sunday’s first
stage, retained the race leader’s golden jersey, with American Tyler Farrar
second in the same time.

Garmin finished the time trial ahead of Omega Pharma-Quick Step and Sky.

“We’re here with some young riders. Second by seven seconds from the
machines that is Garmin,” said Boonen. “It’s really very good. Almost all the world’s best sprinters are here. That promises to throw up a good spectacle.”

Farrar, ranked second because Boonen won the first stage, added: “Team
time-trials are really Garmin’s speciality. They’re even our favourite event. We train a lot for them and today we had great legs.

“I’ll obviously give the maximum over the last four stages to claim the
golden jersey. But we’re at the start of the season. It’s my first race and my
form is without doubt not yet at its best.”

Tuesday sees the riders tackle the 146.5km third stage between Dukhan and
Al Gharafa Stadium.

ALCUDIA, Spain (VN) — Some 565 days have passed since Alberto Contador gave urine samples during the second rest day at the 2010 Tour de France that later revealed traces of clenbuterol.

Since then, there have been tremendous highs and lows in a controversial, drawn-out process that resulted in Monday’s two-year ban released by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

July 21, 2010: Contador undergoes a doping control during the second rest day in Pau during the 2010 Tour de France. He later claims that he dined on steaks the previous evening that he claims were spiked with clenbuterol. Testing later revealed 50 picograms per milliter of clenbuterol. Subsequent samples taken over the next three days were later tested, revealing 16, 7 and 17 picograms/ml, respectively.

July 25: Contador wins the Tour for a third time, beating Andy Schleck by a margin of 39 seconds.

August 23: Results of the anti-doping controls conducted by a WADA-approved laboratory in Cologne, Germany, are handed over to the UCI. Among them is Contador’s A-sample, which revealed traces of clenbuterol, a banned anabolic agent.

August 24: Contador receives provisional ban from the UCI

September 8: Contador’s B-sample also returns positive

September 30: A German television station gets tipped off that Contador tested positive. Journalists make calls for confirmation, prompting Contador and the UCI to publicly reveal the news. Contador explains in a press conference that the likely source of the cliebuterol came when he dined on steaks on July 20 and 21.

November 8: The UCI passes documents to the Spanish cycling federation and asks that a disciplinary hearing against Contador commence

January 25, 2011: The Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) recommends a reduced, one-year sentence. Contador’s legal team appeals the recommendation

February 15: RFEC decides to absolve Contador of all charges and clears him to return to competition

February 16: Contador flies immediately to Lisbon and is forced to take a three-hour taxi ride to arrive in time for the start the next morning of the Volta ao Algarve

March 24: The UCI appeals the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport

March 29: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) joins the appeal

May 20: CAS sets a hearing date for June 6-8, opening the door for Contador race the Giro d’Italia

May 29: Contador wins the Giro for a second time

May 31: CAS delays hearing until early August, allowing Contador to race the Tour de France

July 24: Contador finishes fifth in the Tour

July 26: WADA requests a delay in the hearing until November

November 21-24: A four-day hearing is held at CAS offices in Lausanne, Switzerland. Media attention prompts officials to move the hearing to another building to avoid the press.

January 23, 2012: Contador makes his season debut at the Tour de San Luís in Argentina after yet another delay in the CAS ruling. Contador wins two mountain stages and finishes second behind Levi Leipheimer.

January 30: CAS says a ruling will come in early February

February 5: Contador races the opening day of the Mallorca Challenge, lining up at the start line alongside Andy Schleck

February 6: CAS hands down a two-year ban and disqualification of the 2010 Tour de France as well as all subsequent results. Officials “discount” Contador for time he sat out during his provisional ban, allowing him to return to competition on August 6.

The news of Alberto Contador’s two-year suspension and its after-effects are likely to linger for months. But spare a thought for the riders at the Tour of Qatar this week, who must continue to race as if someone is actually watching them – even if, for the most part, there is nary a soul on the side of the desert roads in Doha.

Before discussing the opening road stage, has everyone not heard enough about what Mark Renshaw thinks of Mark Cavendish? Enough already!

Yes, I am guilty of asking Renshaw about Cavendish at the Tour Down Under. However I did not bombard him with questions about the Manx Missile, and until he beats him fair and square, the subject of Cavendish is not something I will keep asking him about.

Renshaw has never once said he will beat Cavendish straight away, or be as prolific as Cavendish, or that he will win the green jersey. Nor has he said the Sky train will derail and explode like a scene out of ‘The Fugitive,’ that rather inane Hollywood action blockbuster that goes down a treat after a stinking five-hour ride, because your brain’s too cooked to tell you the film has as much substance as the porridge you downed that morning.

For the most part, Renshaw has said in good form, Cavendish will be hard to beat. Nothing revelatory there. He also said Cavendish is beatable – as every other sprinter, and rider, for that matter, is. And that at present Cavendish is the fastest, but André Greipel is probably stronger. Just place the pair side by side and you’ll see that is also rather apparent.

The first stage of Qatar demonstrated Renshaw is still coming to terms with his newly acquired role and the responsibility and lead-out train that comes with it. In the final kilometres, he went from three Rabobankers in front of him to just one (fellow Aussie Graeme Brown) by the red kite; against the might of eventual winner Tom Boonen and Omega Pharma-Quick Step, that was never going to cut it.

Aside from Brown, Rabobank have had their share of sprinters in the past, such as Oscar Freire, Theo Bos and Michael Matthews, the latter two still with the team. The Dutch outfit, however, has never centred their team around one sprinter (at least not in the last 10 years), so, for them, this whole lead-out train caper is something new, and if they’re to match Cavendish, Greipel et al. anytime soon, it’s something they’ll have to get much better at, post-haste.

We’re also learning that the Tour of Qatar is as important for the sprinters as it is for the men of the cobbled Classics. In a number of cases, sprinters are also Spring Classics riders, as it is with Boonen, Thor Hushovd and Tyler Farrar, but there is a raft of riders present in the Middle East with eyes firmly and solely set on the month of April.

On a humorous aside, it appears the Project 1t4i coterie is already proving too much for the television commentator and works dreadfully when calling a sprint finish. So exasperated David Harmon of Eurosport became, he decided to truncate it to simply ‘Project’ midway through the opening stage, which, if he keeps it up, will inevitably get the buffoon who thought of the name the Donald Trump treatment.

It must be a truly gratifying feeling for Garmin-Barracuda and its majority owners, Jonathan Vaughters and Doug Ellis, knowing that they can put together a team which, in unison, can beat the likes of Sky and BMC Racing. It’s worth remembering that the annual salary of the BMC Big Three – namely, Hushovd, Cadel Evans and Philippe Gilbert, reportedly earning $2.75M, $3.4M and $3.85M, respectively – is well over half the combined salary of the entire Garmin team.

And Vaughters’ men has achieved team time trial victories not just at races like Qatar, as they did Monday, but at the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. I’m not sure how he does it, but the fact that he does speaks volumes about the bond within the team, and the riders’ belief in each other. The results speak for themselves.

Finally, one can only surmise Boonen, at 31 years of age, has got his head screwed back on. It’s highly atypical to see a rider with a palmarès like his so desperate to keep a leader’s jersey in a race of Qatar’s stature – yet ‘Tommeke’ was not just pulling monster turns in the 11.3-kilometre TTT, but constantly shouting at his men to maintain their effort all the way to the line.

Whatever he said, it worked: Boonen kept the lead by 3/100ths of second over Tyler Farrar.

Now we just need the Qatari desert winds to blow that little bit stronger. …

PINTO, Spain, (AFP) — Outraged Spaniards rallied behind three-times Tour de France champion Alberto Contador on Monday, decrying his two-year doping suspension as disgraceful and unfair.

From his hometown of Pinto south of Madrid to the micro-blogging site of Twitter, indignant fans insisted there was no proof against the rider and no justification for the punishment.

The Lausanne, Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) slapped the 29-year-old Spaniard with a two-year, backdated suspension running through to August 6, 2012, thus stripping him of his 2010 Tour victory.

Contador tested positive for traces of banned anabolic agent clenbuterol, but he claimed it came from eating contaminated steak and was then cleared by the Spanish Cycling Federation in February 2011. The World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Cycling Union appealed that decision to the CAS, which announced the penalty on Monday.

“We think the sanction is unfair. Until there is evidence to the contrary we should believe Alberto when he says his positive test was due to contaminated meat,” said Ivan Tamaral, an amateur cyclist who came to show his support for Contador outside his home in Pinto.

“In this case, there is no proof against Alberto. We need to read the sentence properly to see why they are suspending him. Maybe he should not have to prove his innocence — they should have to prove that he is guilty,” he said.

Another amateur cyclist in Pinto, wearing Contador’s Saxo Bank team shirt, agreed. “Doping has not been proven but even so they punish him: it is unjust. No one should be condemned if they have not been found guilty of anything. To me, there is something wrong here. I don’t know if they had something against him or if they wanted to make an example. Only the CAS knows.”

Spanish officials regretted the decision, too. “We should respect this decision but we do not share it obviously,” Spanish Cycling Federation president Juan Carlos Castano told public radio RNE. And moreover I think that for cycling and for Spanish sport in general it is very bad news,” he added.

Asked about a possible appeal, the national federation chief said: “If the sportsman decides to take ordinary civil proceedings it is his decision. But for us, this is over.” The official said he had been unable to contact Contador because his telephone line was apparently busy.

Fellow Spaniard and 2006 Tour de France victor Oscar Pereiro slammed the decision on his Twitter account, saying neither the ICU nor the CAS had proven his guilt.

“Two years’ suspension and in the sentence they say that the doping is not proven. What sons of … .” Pereiro wrote. “You know what I think? That he is innocent. I know him,” he added. “What is really rotten in cycling is the leaders, who become millionaires from our sweat and effort.”

Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta wrote on his Twitter account: “Chin up Contador, I am with you, too.”

Spain’s Socialist opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, a former sprinter, said he respected the court’s decision “but as a sports fan, I am very saddened by this news”.

Many Contador fans on Twitter attacked the decision. “Everything they are doing to Contador is because the French cannot bear the success of Spanish sportsmen,” said one fan, AntellSE in a discussion group hash-tagged #ApoyoAlbertoContador (SupportAlbertoContador).

“I know you are innocent and I don’t need the CAS to prove it. You are and will remain my hero,” wrote another.

Praise of the ban on Twitter seemed to be rare among Spaniards, but much more common in comments written in English and French. “When are cycling gonna filter out the drug cheats? #contador is nothing short of a disgrace and an embarrassment to the sport #letour,” wrote one critic of the cyclist.

ALCUDIA, Spain (VN) — No one is opening champagne bottles in the wake of Alberto Contador’s two-year ban for clenbuterol, but scores of results sheets will be adjusted following the CAS ruling to strip the Spaniard of all of his results dating back to 2010 Tour de France.

Here’s a rundown of Contador’s wins from 2010 Tour to present and adjusted ‘winners:’

Andy Schleck will be declared the official champion after Contador becomes just the second rider in Tour history to lose his crown in a doping case. Floyd Landis became the first in 2006 when he tested positive for synthetic testosterone and Oscar Pereiro was later named winner.

Rounding out the adjusted podium will be Denis Menchov second, who was handed victory in the 2005 Vuelta a Espana in the wake of Roberto Heras’s positive for EPO. Third will be Samuel Sanchez. Schleck was diplomatic in his response to the CAS ruling: “There is no reason to be happy now,” he said Monday. “If I succeed this year, I will consider it as my first Tour victory.”

Stage 2: Menchov is bumped to the stage-winner in the mountain-stage in what was Contador’s first win after being cleared by the Spanish cycling federation last year.
Stage 3 (ITT): Jerome Coppel was second to Contador in the short, but decisive individual time trial
GC: Coppel

Stage 3: Michele Scarponi was second to Contador in the climbing stage in Andorra
GC: Scarponi

Stage 4 (ITT): Ex-Saxo Bank teammate Richie Porte was second to Contador in the decisive ITT. Contador later ceded the leader’s jersey in a climbing stage when he punctured with about 2km to go the finish line.

Stage 9: José Rujano was second to Contador up Mount Etna, when Contador blew apart the race to grab the pink jersey and never look back.
Stage 16 (ITT): Vincenzo Nibali was second to Contador in the climbing time trial up Nevegal.
Points jersey: Scarponi
GC: Contador earns the dubious honor of becoming the first rider to see his Giro win stripped in a doping case. Scarponi, who finished 6:10 behind Contador, will become the Giro winner. Scarponi served his own racing ban after admitting his role in the Operación Puerto blood doping ring from 2006. Second will be Nibali with Frenchman John Gadret bumped onto the podium with third.

Stage 3: Levi Leipheimer, who won the overall, was second to Contador in the climbing stage.
Stage 5: Daniel Diaz, a South American rider who also won the best climber’s jersey, was second to Contador in another mountain stage.