Race organizers said Friday they wanted two riders, including a teammate of Lance Armstrong's, to be barred from the rest of the Tour de France, but cycling's governing body disagreed, leaving their fate hanging in the balance.
With the two parties at odds, the two riders, Pavel Padrnos of Armstrong's US Postal team and Italian Stefano Zanini of Quick Step-Davitamon will race on Friday but could be barred as early as Saturday if Tour organizers get their way, said Tour President Patrice Clerc.
But the disagreement has now been given to a third body to arbitrate, and if it rules in favor of the Tour, either one or both riders will be excluded, Clerc said.
"We have asked for the exclusion of these two riders for the same reasons that we invoked last Monday," Clerc told reporters before the start of Friday's stage that is taking the race into the Pyrenees.
On Monday, Tour organizers barred Stefano Casagranda and Martin Hvastija, because they are under investigation in a doping probe in Italy.
Tour organizers learned Thursday from a judge in Italy that both Padrnos and Zanini have been called to appear in October in a case involving suspected doping on the 2001 Tour of Italy, Clerc said.
Tour organizers said before this year's race that any riders involved or implicated in police or judicial doping investigations would be barred. Following that line, they asked the UCI, cycling's governing body, to exclude the riders, Clerc said. But the UCI did not agree to the request, saying that Zanini's case had already been dealt with and that Padrnos' was not a problem with doping.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier