Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Phonak gets reprieve - translation

It would seem that "innocent until proven guilty" holds with the UCI: Phonak will contest the ProTour next year.
At the end of November, the team had been barred from the ProTour after the revelation of the doping case concerning the Swiss Oscar Camenzind, the American Tyler Hamilton and the Spaniard Santiago Perez , three of its major racers who are no longer part of the group in 2005.

The three arbitrators of the CAS, referring to the date of November 12, 2004, the deadline for the examination of license requests by the UCI, "it was not possible, at this stage, to exclude the Phonak team from the ProTour only on the basis of suspicions of doping concerning these two racers (Hamilton and Perez) and even before knowing the result of the disciplinary proceedings with regard to them".

Last year, the Swiss team had made the doping buzz. Camenzind, positive for EPO, had been terminated at once but Hamilton, Olympic time trial champion in Athens and the first athlete to be declared positive for blood transfusion, then Perez (also transfusion), had been supported by their organization which gave a report raising doubts on the method of detection.

[Translated (badly) from the original French here, by your's truly with the aid of Google]

Hamilton quit the team so Phonak would have a better shot. Looks like it paid off.

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