The head of British cycling's governing body wants riders involved in current doping investigations to stay away from the start of next year's Tour de France in London.
"This will be a historic event, in the heart of one of the world's great cities, a fantastic opportunity for our sport," British Cycling president Brian Cookson said.
"We really do not want to see this tarnished by a repeat of the doping scandals of 2006, so, frankly, we urge all those with involvement in various investigations to stay away," he said.
The 94th edition of the Tour will begin in London on July 7.
US rider Floyd Landis won this year's Tour but tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone to epitestosterone. He is contesting the finding.
Pre-Tour favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso were left out of last year's event after their names turned up on a list of 58 cyclists who allegedly had contact with Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor at the center of the Spanish doping probe called "Operation Puerto."
Basso has since been cleared by the Italian cycling federation and was signed up by Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel team. Ullrich was fired by his team and remains without a team for next season.
Several other cyclists implicated by the Spanish doping scandal have been cleared by their respective federations, while not one rider has been sanctioned as a result.
Cookson made his comments on Wednesday while offering support for International Cycling Federation president Pat Mc-Quaid, who has come under fire from European cycling federations recently.
"As far as Britain is concerned, we strongly support president McQuaid in his stance on the anti-doping measures, and we understand the legal difficulties encountered in dealing effectively with such matters," Cookson said.
"The UCI is our best hope for achieving this and we urge all national federations to support president McQuaid at this time."
Iraqi coach killed
Iraq's Olympic cycling coach was killed after gunmen kidnapped him from his home in the latest attack on one of the nation's sports figures, officials said.
Family members identified the body of 48-year-old Mahoud Ahmed Fulayih at the central morgue in the capital on Monday, two days after he was abducted, said Hussein al-Amidi, the acting secretary general of Iraq's National Olympic Committee.
He said Fulayih was kidnapped three days after he returned with the cycling team from the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. The team did not win any medals there.
"We lost another one. He is not a politician and has no link with any party," al-Amidi said. "It looks like no one is excluded from the violence."
Athletes and sports officials have increasingly become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts in Iraq, either as part of retaliatory violence between Shiites and Sunnis or for ransom.
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