Riccò to appeal suspended sentence

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Riccardo Riccò has intimated that he will appeal the two month suspended sentence handed to him by a French court on Tuesday for the use of harmful substances. Riccò was also fined €3,000 in the case, which related to his positive test for CERA at the 2008 Tour de France.

“We consider this judgment to be unjust in that a fundamental principle of French and European law, non bis in idem (that someone cannot be tried for the same offence twice), has been flouted. Mr. Riccò cannot be condemned twice for the same infraction,” Riccò’s lawyer Annamaria Tripicchio Rogier told AFP.

Riccò had previously been sentenced to pay a fine of €5,710 by a court in Padua, Italy in February of this year in charges also relating to his positive test and possession of doping products at the 2008 Tour de France. He was suspended from cycling for twenty months for his positive test, but returned to the peloton in March to ride for Ceramica Flaminia.