Tripleshot Cycling

"My beef, and it seems that the wrong people have been offended, is that if you’re there to report and not to dig deep then you should at least refrain from the over the top reporting on the athletes. Especially in the US where there’s been an uncritical attitude and where reporting has gone over the top into making someone out to be the second coming of Christ, and when you can sense that not everything is right. There needs to be some balance and I don't think that’s the case.”

"In Italy Ivan Basso can do no wrong, in Spain Alberto Contador can do no wrong. Sport is probably the most nationalist thing we’ve still got in the world. People in the US are extremely anti doping with anyone that’s caught when they’re Italian, Spanish or German, but at the same time they don’t want to know about Levi Leipheimer’s positive test from the 90s. It’s a strange attitude and of course the media is much focussed on giving people what they want so they also don’t focus on that."

“The Giro in 2006 was one of the worst experiences of my life in cycling. I’d derive no pleasure from officially winning that race. I think that they should have taken that win away from him and I have no idea why they haven’t. You won't find me speaking about that race in any pleasant manner. For me that race doesn’t exist.”

“As soon as Basso was linked to Puerto and we saw the stuff they unearthed there I don’t know how you can say that race was clean. These guys didn’t just work with Fuentes for a couple of years and then stop for three weeks so they could ride the Giro.”

Barcelona's cause is being helped by arch-rivals Real Madrid, as well as two other Spanish clubs, Valencia and Real Betis. Because yesterday French newspaper Le Monde claimed all four had worked with Eufemiano Fuentes, the 51-year-old Canary Islands-based doctor currently under investigation in Spain for his alleged role in systematically providing banned performance-enhancers to hundreds of top sportsmen and women.
Dr Fuentes first came to the attention of authorities in 2004 when he was one of several people accused by Spanish cyclist Jésus Manzano of participating in a huge doping scheme in sport. Spanish police subsequently found hormones and steroids, 200 packets of blood, products to manipulate it, machines to freeze it and material to perform transfusions in flats belonging to Fuentes and the clinic of another doctor, José Merino Batres. Investigators also found a list of 200 names of athletes, including many riders and other top Spanish sportsmen.

Manzano yesterday told Le Monde he once met a Real Madrid player in Dr Fuentes' clinic. He refused to name the player.

Fuentes told Le Monde that "I have never given names, nor will I, of people or sporting clubs I have worked with." He added that one of the main reasons for this is that he has received death threats. "I was told that if I revealed certain things, my family and myself could have serious problems", he claimed.

Asked why he thought football clubs have not previously been included of doping, Funetes said: "There are certain sports people can't go up against because they have a very powerful legal machinery with which to defend themselves."

Dr Fuentes has been linked to various Spanish sports for a long time. He is married to Cristina Perez, who beat the Spanish 400m hurdles record at the 1988 Olympics, a record that stills stands. Later that year, she tested positive for anabolic steroids and abandoned athletics. In 2000-01, Dr Fuentes was appointed chief doctor of Primera Liga club Las Palmas. After EPO-filled syringes were discovered in the Las Palmas dressing room following a match against Rayo Vallecano, he left his position and got involved with cycling.

Ferrari's daughter, Sara, was also a gifted athlete, Capodacqua told me. At one point, she ran a sub-2:30 marathon, even faster than her old man in his heyday. In 1999, she was competing in a triathlon in Lavarone, Italy. At 22 years old, she was ranked in the top 25 in Italy, and seemed sure to improve. On the bike leg of the race, however, she was spotted receiving a push from an older male cyclist, who turned out to be wearing a fake race number.
She was disqualified. The man who pushed her: Her father.

The story had been reported in the European press, but I'd never seen it. So my translator
and I tracked down Italo Botter, the head judge of that race. Botter confirmed the story.
He said he even keeps a report of the infraction framed on his office wall.