The three-year doping ban handed to Miami-based Colombian cyclist Valeria Cardozo Cabrera for a DHEA violation is more than just another entry in USADA’s case files. It arrives against a backdrop that is becoming impossible to ignore: Colombian cycling is facing a serious reckoning with doping.

The 27-year-old elite track rider for Colombia, who recently switched to racing USA criteriums, returned an adverse analytical finding following a urine test taken after her victory at the Spartanburg Criterium on Friday 02 May 2025 by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). The banned substance detected was dehydroepiandrosterone — commonly known as DHEA — a synthetic anabolic agent. Although DHEA is sold legally over the counter in the United States, its use is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency in all sports.

Since September 2025 alone, Gran Fondo Daily News has now reported on eight Colombian riders caught up in anti-doping violations. Luis Carlos Chia Bermudez earned a three-year ban for using the stimulant Phentermine at the Tour of Hainan, while U23 track star Francisco Jamarilla faced provisional suspension after anabolic steroids were detected across two separate tests at the Pan American Youth Games. Eighteen-year-old junior road racer David Santiago Uribe and former Vuelta Costa Rica champion Marco Tulio Suesca each received four-year bans for EPO use. Continental pro German Dario Gomez — a former Pan American Junior Time Trial Champion — was provisionally suspended after testing positive for Boldenone, a veterinary steroid used in racehorses. Most alarmingly, the UCI provisionally suspended the entire Team Medellín-EPM roster in March 2026 after biological passport abnormalities were flagged for two of its riders.

Cabrera’s case differs only in geography — she now races on United States soil — but her Colombian roots add one more name to a list that is growing at an uncomfortable pace. Her ban runs until 17 July 2028.

Colombia has gifted cycling some of its most beloved climbers and sprinters. The question now being asked is whether the pressure to succeed — from grassroots competitors to pro-am teams — is pushing riders toward shortcuts that betray everything the sport stands for. There are no easy answers, but the pattern demands one.

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