Contador blasts ‘outdated’ doping rules

Three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, who is facing a one-year ban for taking performance enhancing drugs, blasted anti-doping regulations which he said “remain stuck in the 60s.”

“Today, advances in science are able to detect minute amounts of some banned substances which neither further athletic performance nor can possibly be taken voluntarily, except if they enter our bodies through ingested food.

“This is my case with clenbuterol,” the Spanish rider said in a statement on his website.

“But whereas scientific advances have arrived in the year 2011, the rule remains stuck in the 60s, hence my ‘crime’ and possible sanction.

“Only by combining scientific advances with modifications to the anti-doping rules will it be possible to talk about honest and fair sport, as I have always practised it.”

The Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) informed Contador last week of its recommendation of a one-year suspension for his positive drugs test from the 2010 Tour de France.

The 28-year-old has said he plans to appeal, but faces becoming the second Tour de France champion to be stripped of his title, after American Floyd Landis in 2006.

The rider denies any wrongdoing and says he unknowingly ingested trace elements of the banned substance clenbuterol from beef brought from Spain during the second rest day of the Tour.