Iona Napier
DOPING’S dark cloud has swirled around cycling for decades.
In the early days of the Tour de France, riders steeled themselves with cocaine, heroin and strychnine before attempting monstrously long routes.
Modern-day riders adopted slightly more refined techniques, with EPO the favoured doping brand of choice. As always, it’s the sporting public who are cheated most.
So the decision of a Spanish judge in 2013 to destroy more than 200 vials of athletes’ blood seized from the notorious Dr Fuentes defied belief.
It wasn’t just cyclists caught up in Operation Puerto’s net. Whistleblower Jesus Manzano claimed to see well-known Spanish and Brazilian footballers visiting Fuentes.
Thankfully, the undestroyed blood samples remain in a Barcelona lab pending a Madrid Provincial Court decision. Who knows what, or who, they could reveal. They are a sporting time bomb the public deserves to see explode.
