In more optimistic times, the news that Dr Michele Ferrari’s appeal against a doping conviction was turned down by an Italian court this week would have felt like a superfluous postscript to a story whose denouement had been revealed years ago. Instead, the decision to uphold the verdict on the man who introduced Lance Armstrong to EPO seems like a footnote to a story that has simply moved on.
For a while after Armstrong’s fall it looked as though enough good work was being done to permit the provisional victory of hope over ingrained scepticism when it came to the use of performance-enhancing substances in cycling. And no one made a louder proclamation of a desire to play a part in that transformation than the leaders of Team Sky.
Related: Shane Sutton claims of common use of TUEs to ‘find gains’ upset British cyclists
Related: Shane Sutton defends Bradley Wiggins’s use of TUEs for ‘marginal gains’
Continue reading...