Saturday Steroid Shorts

January 20, 2007

Here for your weekend pump: A member of Team Codifis, David Millar was cleared of doping charges by a French court, as reported by the Guardian.

The presiding judge of the court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre yesterday acquitted David Millar of doping charges in the case dating back to 2004 involving his team, Cofidis. The judge, Ghislaine Polge, said that it could not be established whether or not Millar had used banned substances on French soil.

Millar is currently in training in southern Spain with his new team, Saunier Duval, but has already served a two-year ban from racing following his confession in June 2004 that he had used the blood-booster erythropoietin. He was also stripped of his 2003 world time-trial championship title, having admitted that he used EPO in the build-up. Of the nine others accused in the case, a team masseur, Boguslav Madejak, was given a 12-month prison sentence, but will serve only three months.

The Carolina Statesmen reports, the French anti-doping agency is again looking into Tour de France runner-up Oscar Pereiro.  The issue breathes new life into the TUE (therapeutic use exemption).  Steroid Nation promises a commentary on TUE this weekend.

France’s anti-doping agency received paperwork from Tour de France runner-up Oscar Pereiro on Friday explaining why he took an asthma drug during the 2006 race.

Pereiro said he had been cleared by the sport’s governing body, the International Cycling Union to use Ventolin, an inhaler prescribed medically to ease asthma.

Pereiro could be declared the winner of the 2006 Tour if Floyd Landis is stripped of his title.