Anti-doping expert Robin Parisotto has stated that although clean athletes can now win Grand Tours, the net needs to tighten around the more sophisticated cheats. The detection of patterns that suggest micro-dosing EPO and blood transfusions in some blood profiles continues to cause a major concern within anti-doping circles.
Parisotto also raised questions over how the UCI previously governed the sport, and has concerns that athletes’ biological passport (APB) data may have been shielded under the governing body’s previous leadership. He finds it surprising that the riders first sanctioned under the passport system in 2009 included no top names. Pointing to the favouritism by the UCI toward Lance Armstrong and Astana, as evidenced in the CIRC report, he makes the uncomfortable suggestion that the anti-doping experts previously weren't getting full access to the UCI's results.
The Australian forms part of the UCI's panel of experts that examine biological passport cases, and he admits that he has seen seismic shifts in the general patterns within biological passport data since the APB’s inception almost a decade ago when wild fluctuations would present almost ‘open and shut cases’ of blood manipulation and or doping.
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The recent CIRC report into cycling’s doping culture paints a picture of a cleaner sport today, but with a landscape blighted by doping driven underground, with prevalent abuse of corticoid steroid and therapeutic use exemptions within the peloton.
Passport picture fuzzy under McQuaid
Certainly, the first batch of biological passport cases unveiled by the UCI in 2009 in which five riders - Pietro Caucchioli, Ricardo Serrano, Igor Astarloa, Ruben Lobato Elvira, and Francesco De Bonis - were sanctioned, included no riders who were considered big fish at the time. Astarloa may have won the rainbow jersey in Hamilton in 2003 but by the time his case was announced he was almost unrecognisable in reputation to the one who had performed so well at Saeco.
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