Longo threatens to sue AFLD

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Jeannie Longo is set to sue the French anti-doping agency AFLD for “violation of professional confidentiality” in the wake of reports last month that the Frenchwoman had twice supplied insufficient whereabouts information and then missed a doping control earlier this year.

An article in L’Équipe in early September stated that the AFLD was to send a dossier on the Longo case to the French Cycling Federation (FFC) in order to open disciplinary proceedings against the veteran rider. Longo’s lawyer Pierre Albert complained that his client only learned of the possibility of sanction via the press and accused the AFLD of leaking confidential information.

“All of this leaves us to think that this violation came from the interior of the AFLD,” Albert said, according to RTL. He later told AFP that “a complaint is in the process of being sent to the Paris prosecution.”

“The members of the agency are bound to confidentiality,” he said. “One can doubt the impartiality of the procedure from the moment that Jeannie Longo learns in the press that they are going to send a dossier to the FFC.”

Longo has not denied failing to supply sufficient whereabouts information, nor has she refuted the allegation that she missed an out of competition test in the United States in July. Her current legal action is aimed at the manner in which the accusations entered the public domain rather than their substance.

Longo’s husband and coach Patrice Ciprelli has since been accused of purchasing EPO via the internet, and Longo subsequently opted to withdraw from the UCI World Championships in Copenhagen. Ciprelli has denied the allegation.