Second Spaniard Arrested As Another Doping Scandal Hits Tour de France

The French police raided the hotel room of Spanish rider Moises Duenas Nevado after the rider failed an anti-doping test during the Tour de France.

They arrested the rider for the Barloworld team on  Wednesday morning after finding banned substances in the hotel room.

Duenas Nevado is the second rider expelled from this year’s Tour de France for a failed drug test. Manuel Beltran, another Spanish rider, tested positive for EPO after the first stage.

The Barloworld team announced on its Web site Wednesday afternoon that the police had found “some banned medicines that were absolutely not supplied or prescribed by the team doctor” in Duenas Nevado’s hotel room in Tarbes, where the team had spent the previous three nights.

According to a report from the French Anti-Doping Agency, Duenas Nevado tested positive last week for the blood-boosting drug EPO, which is banned in cycling.

The test was conducted after the tour’s fourth stage, an individual time trial in Cholet, but the results became available only this week.

Claudio Corti, the manager of the Barloworld team, said in a statement that the team was unaware of any drug use by Duenas Nevado before Wednesday.

“We’re absolutely stunned by what is happening and by the behavior of one of our riders,” Corti said.

“He seems to have secretly used banned substances, hiding everything from everybody else in the team.” Corti added, “It’s terribly disheartening, but because the team is not involved in what has happened, we hope that the whole truth can rapidly emerge so that we can take the necessary action and that Duenas can fully accept responsibility for what he has done.”

The search and detention of Duenas Nevado is the same procedure applied last week to Beltran, of the Liquigas team. The anti-doping effort at the Tour de France this year is being conducted by the French Anti-Doping Agency instead of the International Cycling Union because of a dispute between the cycling union and the organizers of the Tour de France.

The French police have been cooperating in that effort in an attempt to heighten the perceived penalties for cheating. If Duenas Nevado possessed or took banned performance-enhancing drugs without a prescription while in France, he might have violated French law.

He could face up to five years in prison if convicted of a sports doping offense under French law. Duenas Nevado was withdrawn from Wednesday’s race by his team under the terms of a contract that all of the teams signed with the Tour de France. The contract specifies that a team can continue in the race if one of its riders tests positive as long as the team is not involved and it immediately withdraws the rider, without waiting for the results of the test of a second sample of the rider’s urine.

Duenas Nevado has the right to request the testing of his second sample and to be present during the test. If he declines or if the second test proves positive, he can be suspended for two years and fined a year’s salary, which for a rider like him can total up to about $100,000.

 Christopher Froome, a teammate of Duenas Nevado’s on the Barloworld team, said shortly before the start of Wednesday’s stage in Lannemezan that team members had not been able to speak with Duenas Nevado since about two dozen policemen came to the hotel at about 8 a.m. “Obviously everyone was really shocked about it,” Froome said. “It’s disappointing, obviously, but they still have to test the B sample, and personally I just hope it’s a big mistake. We’ll just have to wait and see. If it’s not, then I’m just really disappointed. That’s just obviously his own choice and it’s affected all of us, unfortunately.”

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