Damsgaard on Tour doping

Rasmus Damsgaard, the man behind Team CSC-Saxo Bank's anti-doping program, indicated on Danish Television Wednesday that he is not satisfied with the way the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) and French Anti-doping Agency (AFLD) are handling the anti-doping controls at the Tour de France.

The second doping case of the French Grand Tour broke Wednesday morning when Spanish rider Moisés Dueñas of Team Barloworld was announced to have had his "A" sample test non-negative for banned blood booster erythropoietin. Dueñas was suspended from his team and did not start stage 11 after the news while the results of his "B" sample are pending.

After news of the second doping case, Dr. Damsgaard said according to www.dr.dk, "In fact, I think that these two cases show that their doping control does not work - because of the fact that two very moderate riders have been caught by random tests."

"I am afraid that if ASO did an EPO test on all riders in the peloton tomorrow, 10, 20 even maybe 30% of the riders would test positive for EPO," hypothesized Dr. Damssgaard, who thought it would be up to ASO as to whether the Tour de France would see more positive doping tests.

"If ASO continues doing only random tests, there will probably only be one or two more caught. However, if they work harder and start collecting a larger quantity of samples to test for EPO, we will see more positive cases," Dr. Damsgaard explained.

The Tour de France is not being sanctioned by the UCI, but instead run under the French Cycling Federation, so the AFLD is in charge of anti-doping controls at the this year's Tour de France.

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