Just one day after the suspension of Portuguese outfit Feirense Beeceler, the UCI has rocked the racing world again with a second pro-am continental team sanction, this time striking at the heart of Colombian cycling.
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and International Testing Agency confirmed on Wednesday the provisional 30-day suspension of Colombian team Team Medellín-EPM, following the detection of biological passport abnormalities for riders Aldemar Reyes Ortega, 30, and Fabio Andrés Duarte Arévalo, 39. The ban prevents the Antioquian outfit from competing in from 27 March until 25 April.
The ruling comes barely 24 hours after the UCI announced the suspension of Portuguese team Feirense Beeceler for similar biological passport issues, in what governing bodies are already describing as an unambiguous signal of zero tolerance toward prohibited practices.
Team Medellín-EPM, one of the most historic and beloved outfits in Latin American cycling, is also home to veteran Spanish rider Óscar Sevilla, 49, who mentors and races alongside his much younger teammates. Though, Sevilla also has a questionable link to doping. He was dropped from the pro WorldTour T-Mobile team in 2006 when the Operacion Puerto scandal implicated him as being a client of Spanish doping Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes.
The team has denied any institutional wrongdoing and announced it will cooperate fully with the ongoing UCI investigation. The team’s sporting director stated in an official release that the organisation deeply regrets the situation and that internal measures would be enacted immediately.
The reputation of Colombian cycling, which over the past decade has shone brilliantly through riders who have dominated the great tours of the international calendar, is now put into serious question with this and other recent doping cases – German Dario Gomez, David Santiago Uribe and Marco Tulio Suesca, Francisco Jamarilla and Luis Carlos Chia Bermudez.
The team retains the right to appeal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Photo Credit: Facebook/TeamMedellin
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