The head of cycling's governing body says that Tyler Hamilton could be facing a lifetime ban if links to an alleged blood doping ring in Spain are confirmed. Others, including 1997 Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile), 2006 Giro d’Italia champion Ivan Basso (CSC) and T-Mobile's Oscar Sevilla could face four-year bans before returning to cycling’s 20-team ProTour league.

UCI President Pat McQuaid told VeloNews that if police evidence linking Hamilton to Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes is proven, the 2004 Olympic time trial champion will be banned for life.

“With the evidence which we seem to see in this dossier, he’s gone for life,” McQuaid told VeloNews on Saturday. “The implications for the riders in the case are two years from WADA code and two years from the ProTour, that’s four years. And Hamilton, a ban for life. That would be a second offense.”

Hamilton, who is currently serving a two-year suspension for blood-doping, has consistently maintained his innocence, ever since he was notified of a positive result in 2004. His current ban is set to end on September 23.

Ullrich and Basso were among nine riders removed Friday from the 2006 Tour de France while Hamilton’s name was among a list of more than 50 active and retired racers with alleged links to Fuentes.

McQuaid seeks harsh penalties.

Photo: AFP - file photo

Earlier this week, the Spanish daily El País published police evidence from the 2002-03 seasons that alleges Hamilton not only engaged in banned blood transfusion practices, but also used EPO, anabolic steroids, human growth hormones and IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) during his collaboration with Fuentes.

Hamilton strongly denied those allegations in a message posted on his personal web page.

“I was very upset to read the accusations against me and to see my name associated with the Operación Puerto investigation in Spain,” Hamilton said in a statement released after the paper's publication on Monday. “I have not been treated by Dr. Fuentes. I have not done what the article alleges. In addition, I have never been contacted by authorities in Spain regarding these allegations. Therefore, it is also impossible to comment on a situation I have no knowledge of.”

Contacted on Saturday, Hamilton referred additional queries to his attorney, Howard Jacobs. Jacobs told VeloNews that he’d heard nothing but second-hand reports of the UCI’s position on the matter.

“It’s hard to respond to something, when you have no evidence or documentation in hand,” Jacobs said. “I assume they plan to go through the proper channels, to review the case, and then reach a decision… but it seems these days the new MO is to ban first and figure it out later.”

“At a certain point process has to matter … and I think everyone has forgotten that,” he added.

Jacobs compared the current situation to the treatment another client of his received.

“I also represented (sprinter Tim) Montgomery in the BALCO case,” he said. “That was another example of a non-analytical positive – no lab result, just implication by association – but at least in that case, USADA had the decency to sit down with us and go over the evidence they had. We haven’t seen anything like that to this point.”

Jacobs said the only “evidence” he’d seen to date is reproductions of notebook pages and faxes on VeloNews.com. Jacobs said Hamilton’s treatment seems symptomatic of an environment in which sports agencies “are stepping over themselves to appear more aggressive than the others. That’s not right.”

Jacobs said he and Hamilton have little choice but to “wait for the documentation, which may be a while.

“I know that when Jan Ullrich’s attorney asked for documents, he was refused,” Jacobs said. “If they are going to charge an athlete, they ought to at least give him a chance to review and respond to the evidence.”

Jacobs reiterated Hamilton's denial that he had ever been treated by Fuentes, who was among five people detained May 23 as part of Spain's largest anti-doping investigation dubbed “Operación Puerto.”

McQuaid said the UCI will receive the complete 500-page report from Spanish authorities on Monday and will closely review evidence from the four-month investigation. UCI and Tour officials received a condensed 50-page version late Thursday night that allowed them to keep riders implicated in the investigation out of the Tour.

All riders implicated in the Fuentes case could face outright two-year racing bans if evidence proves they were using banned substances, McQuaid confirmed. And the ProTour riders would face an additional two-year ban before being allowed to return to a ProTour team.

McQuaid also confirmed that Hamilton will not be allowed to join a ProTour team when his ban ends in September. He said despite Hamilton’s failed doping test coming in 2004, Hamilton falls under ProTour guidelines because his sanction wasn’t finalized until 2005.

“His ban was two years and he’s going another two years with the ProTour anyway, because he was sanctioned within the ProTour rules. The ProTour Code of Ethics came in in January, 2005, so he was sanctioned within that, so he has the two years extra,” McQuaid said. “Unlike Millar, who was sanctioned in 2004, so he only has the two years, so Hamilton is already facing four.”

Jacobs says he remains unsure of how McQuaid and the UCI intend to pursue the case as it relates to Hamilton.

"If they go and read the World Anti-Doping code, I’m not sure that this would qualify as a second offense," he said.

Hamilton allegedly tested positive for homologous blood-doping - the injection of another person's red blood cells - at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, but that result was negated after laboratory personnel froze the B-sample, which is required for confirmation of a positive. Hamilton was again tested following his time trial stage victory at the 2004 Vuelta a España and that result was ultimately confirmed.

Hamilton has consistently maintained his innocence, challenging the scientific veracity of the test, which relies on the variations in antigen receptors on the surface of red blood cells to distinguish the presence of another person's blood. After a lengthy appeals process, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld his suspension, ordering him not to compete until September 2006.

-VeloNews.com Editor Charles Pelkey contributed to this report