In an unprecedented move the world governing body has requested that the Astana team, for whom Vincenzo Nibali won last year’s Tour de France, have their licence revoked.
The Union Cycliste Internationale’s move comes after an audit of the team’s anti-doping procedures carried out by the Institute of Sports Science at the University of Lausanne. The UCI was unwilling to comment on any time scale for the process.
Astana released a statement on Friday night indicating that they intend to fight the ruling: “Astana Pro Team has received confirmation from the Union Cycliste International of their receipt of results from the recent audit by the Institute of Sport and Science at the University of Lausanne, and the subsequent transfer of those results to the Independent License Commission.
“Astana Pro Team will consult with its attorneys to prepare documents and testimony before the Independent Licence Commission. Astana Pro Team will reserve its rights pending due process at the Independent Licence Commission to appeal to the court of arbitration for sport following the scheduled procedure.”
If the licence commission complies, and any further legal proceedings end in the UCI’s favour, that could potentially mean the end of the team, sponsored by a consortium of Kazakh companies and headed by the controversial former cyclist Alexander Vinokourov. In that event it is possible that Nibali and other star riders, such as the Italian Fabio Aru, would be picked up by other squads.
A press release from the UCI stated: “After careful review of this extensive report the UCI strongly believes that it contains compelling grounds to refer the matter to the licence commission and request the Astana Pro Team licence be revoked. The UCI considers that the audit has, among other things, revealed a big difference between the policies and structures presented to the licence commission in December and the reality on the ground.”
The licence commission – a four-man panel, headed by a Swiss judge, which is independent of the UCI – will also take into account sections of a four-year long inquiry by Padua magistrates into alleged doping in Italy.
The Italian media alleged in December that members of the Astana team had been found to be involved.
The newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport claimed that the report found that members of Astana – not including Nibali – had been working with Lance Armstrong’s former trainer Michele Ferrari. Ferrari has strongly denied any Astana link; the team have also denied the reports.
The UCI statement merely read: “As some evidence concerns Astana Pro Team members, the file has been passed to the licence commission as part of this referral.”
The ISSUL audit was ordered in December as a condition of Astana being awarded a WorldTour licence after two riders in the Astana WorldTour team – Valentin and Maxim Iglinsky – tested positive last August for the blood booster EPO, and an apprentice at the team, Ilya Davidenok, for anabolic steroids. Part of the brief was to assess the extent to which Astana as a team were responsible for the doping cases, as well as to see to what degree the team were implementing measures designed to ensure teams took greater responsibility for rider welfare and ethics.
The decision to award Astana’s WorldTour licence on that basis sparked a wave of adverse comment from cycling fans – and figures as diverse as Lance Armstrong and Sir Dave Brailsford – but at the time the UCI president, Brian Cookson, told the Guardian that Astana were “very much on probation – on a very short leash”. He added that there were other factors that could count against Astana such as the team’s history – other doping cases under different management teams, including Vinokourov’s blood doping positive in 2007 – and the extent to which they co-operated with the audit team.
Cookson has publicly requested that Vinokourov should speak to the independent commission on reform in cycling which was set up to examine doping; it is unclear whether he has done so.
Speaking to reporters at the world track cycling championships in Paris last week, Cookson explained that the UCI’s priority had been to ensure that, if a case were to be made against Astana, it should be legally watertight, so that there could be no possibility of a repeat of the situation in 2012-13 when the Katusha squad were refused a WorldTour licence but won an appeal against the licence commission ruling at the court of arbitration for sport.