Cycling: Petacchi pulls out of Tour following doping offence

One of cycling's most successful sprinters, Alessandro Petacchi, of Italy, will not be taking part in the Tour de France this year after it was confirmed yesterday that he will be banned for the use of a doping substance, salbutamol.

Italy's anti-doping authorities, CONI, recommended that Petacchi be suspended for one year for the offence. A final decision will now by taken by Petacchi's federation but it is more likely to toughen up the sanction rather than let him go clear.

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The 33-year-old is authorised to use salbutamol in limited quantities because the drug forms part of the medicine ventolin, which is used to alleviate athsma.

However, the amount recorded in his system after a stage during the Giro d'Italia in May - where Petacchi won five stages - was 1,320 ng/ml, [nanograms per millilitre] well above the 1000 ng/ml upper ceiling permitted for registered asthmatics like Petacchi.

The sprinter said on Monday, when questioned by CONI, that he had used his inhaler in good faith. However, CONI have stuck firmly to the rulebook and Petacchi's team, Milram, has confirmed that he will not be competing in the Tour.

Pat McQuaid, the president of cycling's governing body, the International Cycling Union, has recently asked that the system for awarded therapeutic use exemption certificates be extensively reviewed.

Just to add to the Tour's woes, it was rumoured yesterday that a decision concerning the 2006 winner Floyd Landis and his alleged use of another banned drug, synthetic testosterone, may finally be made public by the United States Anti-Doping Authority.

Landis faces a two-year suspension and will be stripped of his title if he is found guilty. But both the USADA and Landis are virtually certain to appeal to the Sports Arbitration Council in Switzerland. October has been suggested as the date for a final, definitive verdict, in a doping case already painfully over-long in being resolved.