Anti-doping chief calls Tour tests a success

The president of the agency in charge of doping controls at the Tour de France has called this year's tests a success. Pierre Bordry, president of the French Anti-doping Agency (AFLD), qualified the remark by saying he regretted that the International Cycling Union (UCI) had not cooperated with his agency more.

The AFLD was called in to conduct the controls after the race organisers decided to hold the Tour outside the UCI's control and under the aegis of the French Federation.

The agency conducted 80 random pre-race tests during the weeks prior to the Tour, and one blood test of each of the 180 starters two days prior to the July 5 start in Brest.

The pre-race tests allowed the agency to target certain riders with suspicious blood values, which Bordry said resulted in the EPO positives of Manuel Beltran and Riccardo Riccò. The positive EPO test for Moises Dueñas was the result of a random control.

"For us to target some riders we used a mix of their results, our own information and what we seen on the race itself," he told the Associated Press. "The chief of the doping controls spent the entire month of July watching the Tour on television."

The agency will have performed 250 doping controls during the race on top of the pre-race tests. "It's more than what the UCI usually do," Bordry said. But, he said, the targeted testing could have been more effective had the UCI shared its data from the biological passport program.

"I would have preferred that the UCI collaborated a bit more with us in the fight against doping," said Bordry. "We played the game with the UCI, but they have refused to give us any information whatsoever."