Former Cannondale rider's counsel asks for more time to analyse supplements he was using
Two-time winner Tom Danielson (Cannondale-Garmin) hopes to repeat this year. (Image credit: Jonathan Devich/epicimages.us)
Resolution of Tom Danielson's anti-doping case will delayed until this fall after an arbitration panel granted the former Cannondale rider's request for a postponement.
"Mr. Danielson will remain provisionally suspended, and the hearing originally scheduled for June will move to a yet-to-be-determined date in the fall," the US Anti-doping Agency said in a statement announcing the decision on Tuesday.
Danielson's racing career has been in limbo since he left the 2015 Tour of Utah before the race started in August, announcing on Twitter at the time that USADA had informed him that a sample taken during an out-of-competition test on July 9, 2015, returned a positive result for anabolic agent found through Carbon Isotope Ratio testing.
Danielson has maintained that he did not knowingly ingest any banned substances, but Cannondale chose not to renew his contract for this season.
In today's announcement, USADA said it was ready to move forward with the initial hearing scheduled for this month, but Danielson's counsel requested the postponement to allow his legal team more time "to conduct further analysis of supplements he was using at the time of sample collection."
Danielson served a three-month suspension for his admissions as part of USADA's investigation into Lance Armstrong in 2012. He admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs including EPO up until 2006.
In a series of tweets in August of 2015, Danielson claimed that he did not take any banned substances since returning from his earlier ban. A second doping offence could mean a lifetime ban for the 38-year-old American.
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"I would never ever take anything like this, especially after everything I have gone through the last years. This makes absolutely no sense," Danielson wrote at the time. "I will now, as I wait for the B test, have the supplements I take tested to see if this is what caused it."
USADA later confirmed that Danielson's B test had been tested and also returned a positive result.
"I feel incredibly hurt, frustrated and angry by this," he wrote on Twitter. "I don't understand how or why this happened and still can't even accept this is true."
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