Sunday update

Emmanuelle Sella has pulled out the Trofeo Matteotti at the last minute, supposedly due to tendonitis. Yeah, right. I suppose the fact that CERA testing is now being done in Italy has nothing at all to do with it. What a joke.

In Gazzetta, Ricco makes ambiguous comments: "We'll have to wait a few days to make sense of the situation. We'll have to wait for the B-test, and then see if the method used in the test is valid. I don't think it is 100% reliable." Not exactly a denial. Does anyone else get the feeling that he doesn't even think he has done anything wrong? It is scary when people seem to lack any sort of a conscience.

In Ouest France, Stéphane Heulot, former press officer for Saunier Duval, says, "In 2005, when they introduced Mauro Gianetti to me and said he was the new team manager, I thought it was a joke. I was his roommate at La Française des Jeux at the 1998 Tour de Romandie when he nearly died because he'd used a doping substance called PFC. Managers like Gianetti are so obsessed with doping that they can't conceive of cycling without it." Heulot also says that he warned the Saunier-Duval company executives of his suspicions about doping on the team, but that the company was not able to easily get out of their sponsorship contract. Heulot also suggests that the Saunier-Duval executives knew very little about cycling.

Italian newspaper La Stampa claims that the Italian anti-doping authorities wanted to test for CERA during the Giro, but the UCI refused to allow them to collect samples from riders in the evening, which is said to be better timing for CERA testing. This is interesting, as clearly the AFLD's freedom from UCI control has been essential to their success, and the Italian anti-doping officials did not have such freedom. Quite a few riders from the Giro must be thankful to the UCI for saving them from testing positive.

According to El Mundo and Marca, the Spanish doping doctor Marcos Maynar, who was the team doctor of the heavily-doped Portuguese squad LA-MSS, has sent out an email to ten cycling teams offering urine testing and steroid profiling through the laboratory of La Universidad de Extremadura, where he is a professor. ARD, who first reported this story, suggests that Maynar is offering such internal testing services in order for riders to be able check whether their degree of doping will be over the allowed limits and thus be detected by official controls. It is not surprising that FdJ team doctor Gérard Guillame has recently said, "It's now clear to everyone but the Spanish authorities that Spain is the headquarters of doping in Europe, for every sport." CERA is reportedly sold without a prescription only in Spain and Switzerland.

[Thanks go to helpful emailer for the assistance with this post.]