LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Sport’s highest court completed a four-day hearing into Alberto Contador’s doping case Thursday, and the Spanish rider must now wait until early next year to find out if he will be stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title.
Contador made a final, personal appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport panel to complete his defense that eating contaminated steak caused his positive tests for clenbuterol during his third Tour victory.
“He spoke for about 15 minutes,” CAS secretary general Matthieu Reeb told reporters after Contador left the court. “He took the case very seriously. He was present for all the case and attended all the discussions.”
Reeb said the three-man panel would need “six to eight weeks” to reach a verdict and explain its decision.
Contador did not comment as he left court with his legal team.
International Cycling Union and World Anti-Doping Agency lawyers also declined comment.
Cycling’s governing body and WADA appealed to CAS for Contador to get a two-year ban after he was cleared by a Spanish cycling federation tribunal last February.
If found guilty of doping, Contador can expect to receive a two-year ban and be stripped of his 2010 Tour win and other victories, including the 2011 Giro d’Italia. He finished fifth when defending his Tour title in July.
Contador was cross-examined Wednesday, according to reports in Spanish newspapers, which published daily updates of evidence presented in the closed-door sessions.
About 20 witnesses were called to testify in sessions held mostly at International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne.
They included the Spanish butcher who sold the steak to a friend of Contador; Louis Rovner, an American polygraph expert who performed a lie detector test on Contador; and the rider’s former teammates on the Astana squad, Benjamin Noval and Paolo Tiralongo.
Expert witness called by WADA and the UCI included Australian scientist Michael Ashenden, to analyze results from Contador’s blood samples, and Hans Geyer from the laboratory at Cologne, Germany, which found the tiny amount of clenbuterol in his urine samples from the Tour.
WADA was expected to argue that the fat-burning, muscle-building drug was reintroduced into Contador’s body on July 20 and 21 last year by a blood transfusion, which itself would have been a doping offense.
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