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Wednesday, 9 August 2006, 18:57 GMT 19:57 UK

Cycling set for anti-drugs audit

Floyd Landis Cycling boss Pat McQuaid is set to launch an in-depth review of the sport to weed out the drugs culture.

Professional cycling was shamed again when Tour de France winner Floyd Landis tested positive for illegal amounts of testosterone during the race.

The affair is just the latest in cycling's sorry history but McQuaid is determined to clean up the sport.

"We're going to do a complete audit to see what more we can do in the fight against doping," he told BBC Sport.

"Cycling's image has been seriously damaged, not just by the Landis case but the Spanish affair before the Tour de France.

"That's something we have to face up to and to act on in order to get that image back and I've no doubt we can do that."

UCI boss Pat McQuaid

McQuaid is promising to pore over all aspects of the sport, including the events, the calendar, riders, teams and management, and he suggested that the police could help crack drug networks.

He also plans to introduce new measures for cycling "so there is no excuse for doping".

"A panel of sociologists, sports psychologists and sports physiologists will be discussing those changes. They would be brought in to be effective as from 2008," he said.

"Most of our doping problems come in the three major Tours and that's something we will have to examine as well.

"We have to understand that the sport of cycling in 2006 is different from 10 years ago or 60 years ago. It must be adjusted to the modern day."

"In this year's Tour de France there were probably 300 controls done and we got one positive and unfortunately that was the winner"
Pat McQuaid

Despite its image, McQuaid insisted that cycling was at the forefront of the anti-doping battle.

"We already do more because we are the only sport that takes riders out of competition on suspicion of being involved in a doping infraction - every other sport waits until a rider is proven guilty until they sanction them," he said.

"We do out-of-competition controls and in-competition controls - blood tests on the day of competition. We're the only ones who do that and we use those blood tests to target riders, so if we end up having a small percentage more than other sports of positive cases it's because we target riders.

"In this year's Tour de France there were probably 300 controls done and we got one positive and that was the winner. That's unfortunate for the sport and the credibility of the sport.

"But we will always continue to be completely proactive, independent and transparent in the anti-drugs fight."




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Related to this story:

Landis blames testing procedure (08 Aug 06 |  Cycling )
Landis returns positive B sample (05 Aug 06 |  Cycling )
Landis sample 'well above limit' (02 Aug 06 |  Cycling )
Rogge defends under-fire cycling (29 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Tour de farce (28 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Landis denies cheating with drugs (27 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Cycling promises doping 'crusade' (28 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Tour dismay at Landis failed test (27 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Landis gives positive drugs test (27 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Awesome Landis takes Tour crown (23 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Landis roars back with epic win (20 Jul 06 |  Cycling )
Pereiro leads after Landis cracks (19 Jul 06 |  Cycling )

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