Cycling: Doping Charges Keep Basso on the Outside

Monday, April 30, 2007 - 03:19 PM

Forza....

Italian fans ran around draped in their national colors at the start of the Fleche Wallonne classic in Belgium, looking for Ivan Basso’s bicycle beside the Discovery Channel bus. It was nowhere in sight, nor was their national star.

After winning the Giro d’Italia last year, Basso is now sidelined by his team because of fresh doping allegations — and with the season of major tours starting May 12, the battered sport is facing yet another scandal.

Basso’s problems are similar to those of Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France last year, who is accused of doping. “This could all drag on again,” said Erik Breukink, leader of the Rabobank team. “Legal problems — you don’t solve these on a whim.”

Especially not in cycling. Almost a year later, there is still an asterisk next to the sport’s premier event, the Tour de France — was it won by Landis or by the runner-up, Oscar Pereiro?

Basso may not be available to defend his Giro title because the Discovery Channel barred him from racing after the Italian Olympic Committee reopened its investigation into the Spanish doping scandal. Basso was thrown out of last year’s Tour because of allegations he received performance-enhancing drugs from a Spanish doctor.

The scandal also kept the 1997 Tour de France champion, Jan Ullrich of Germany, out of the 2006 race and drove him into retirement this year. Like all of the top riders who are implicated, he denies doping.

Basso was hired by Discovery during the winter to become the team’s next Lance Armstrong. Now he faces a doping hearing Wednesday, 10 days before the start of the Giro. Landis, seeking to disprove he was doping at the Tour, has his hearing with the United States Anti-Doping Agency two weeks later. He called his season off long ago.

As the ProTour is entering the most exciting stretch of the season, doubt is everywhere.

“We are sure about nothing,” Breukink said. “Not even Basso. That might yield nothing. Riders have their rights, too.”

The hearing in Italy leaves Basso’s future in cycling in serious doubt and Discovery Channel’s season up in the air at a critical point.

Basso’s sporting director, Dirk Demol, was standing across the street from where fans were taking pictures of the Discovery bikes Thursday. Demol chatted and joked with an easygoing demeanor, belying the problems facing the team. Demol, a former racer, said Basso’s teammates reacted with amazement to the news earlier this week. “But the atmosphere is already good again,” he said.

He declined to address the underlying issue —why Discovery had taken a risk by hiring a doping-tainted rider like Basso, who was let go by the CSC team late last year amid the fallout from the Spanish scandal.

Armstrong, who is still involved with the Discovery team, with which he rode to his final Tour victory in 2005, has said Levi Leipheimer of the United States may move into Basso’s spot if Basso remained sidelined.

The CSC team manager, Bjarne Riis, said he took no satisfaction in Discovery’s problems.

“For us, it was the end of the story when we left him,” he said. Riis, too, was accused of doping when he won the Tour in 1996, but he has brushed off the allegations.

“I did last year what was best for the team,” he said. “We have decided to move on and concentrate on the future. This is where we put our energy. We have paid enough.”

Riis also said CSC was conducting private drug tests on its riders.

In 1999, the Italian star Marco Pantani was the Tour and the Giro defending champion when he failed a random blood test and was kicked out of the Italian race he was dominating. It created an uproar in a nation that embraces cycling.

The five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault said he did not want to see a repeat of that embarrassment.

“Get them out before,” he said of drug users. “It is a lot clearer.”