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Valverde's CAS hearing postponed
There is a new delay in Alejandro Valverde’s hearing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
According to a statement released Monday by the world sports court, a scheduled November 16 hearing has been postponed due to requests by all parties involved in the case.
A statement said a new hearing “will be fixed as soon as possible.”
The court also reported that another appeal initiated by the UCI and WADA against the Spanish cycling federation for not opening proceedings against Valverde is “unlikely to take place before the end of the year.”
The reigning Vuelta a España champion is fending off allegations leveled by Italian authorities that he was one of the top clients of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, alleged to be the ringleader in the Operación Puerto scandal.
Officials from CONI matched blood samples taken during the 2008 Tour de France to bags said to contain blood belonging to Valverde. Following a successful DNA match, they slapped the Spanish rider with a two-year racing ban within Italian borders.
That was enough to keep Valverde out of the 2009 Tour, because the route covered about 100km of Italian roads en route from Switzerland to France in the final week.
Valverde claims he’s innocent while his lawyers argue Italian authorities have no legal right to ban a rider who holds a Spanish racing license.
There’s no word when CAS might announce its final decision on the case, but the stakes are huge for both sides.
If CAS rules in favor of Valverde, he could be cleared of allegations that he was a Fuentes client. If CAS upholds the CONI ban, the UCI is expected to impose a universal ban, meaning Valverde could serve a two-year ban from racing his bike anywhere.
It’s just the latest legal angle in a story that dates back to the May 2006 police raids on Fuentes’ and others’ labs and offices that unearthed one of the largest and most elaborate blood-doping rings in Europe.
Spanish law at the time of the raids prevented the proceeding judge from imposing strict jail terms or racing bans. With his hands tied, judge Antonio Serrano has twice tried to close the case, only to be quickly challenged with appeal by the UCI, WADA and other Spanish prosecutors.
Under Spanish law, if a case is closed and no charges are filed, all gathered evidence — nearly 100 bags of blood, diaries and other items — would be returned to Fuentes and the others.
In Spain, the Puerto case is in the hands of an appeal court, which will decide if any laws were broken under existing law at the time of the 2006 raids.
A stricter, anti-doping law has since been signed into law in Spain, but it cannot be retroactively applied to the Puerto case.
