alejandro valverde 2 year ban : cas ruling

Spanish cycling champion Alejandro Valverde has been banned from the sport of cycling for two years beginning in January 2010, by a panel of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He has been found to violate article 15.2 of the UCI Anti-Doping and has been linked to the blood doping ring of Operación Puerto. Operación Puerto dates back to 2004, when the Spanish authorities first began investigating doping operations in Madrid. The case came to a head when in May, 2006, the Civil Guard raided the clinic of Eufemiano Fuentes and seized over a hundred bags of blood, doping products and other evidence of performance enhancing procedures.The UCI requested in August, 2007 that the RFEC open disciplinary hearings against Valverde when the rider was linked to a bag of blood labeled '18' which also contained the banned blood booster EPO.The presence of EPO and the DNA evidence gathered by the CONI linking Valverde to the bag was deemed sufficient by the CAS to ban Valverde world-wide based upon the "use or attempted use by a rider of a prohibited substance or prohibited method".The decision will likely lead the UCI to strip Valverde of his overall victory in the Tour de Romandie and his second place in Paris-Nice as well as see him stripped of his position as UCI World Rankings leader.