PETACCHI FACING ONE-YEAR BAN

ALESSANDRO PETACCHI 2

Alessandro Petacchi (Milram) will not start the Tour de France and is unlikely to race until next summer after the Italian anti-doping investigators recommended that he should be given a one-year ban for failing a doping test for Salbutamol.

The Italian investigators recommended the ban on Wednesday afternoon after studying Petacchi?s defence and questioning him on Monday in Rome. A test carried out after Petacchi won the tenth stage of the Giro d?Italia to Pinerolo found a level of 1320ng/ml of Salbutamol. The 33 year-old Italian sprinter suffers from asthma and has a valid therapeutic exemption certificate (TUE) but under UCI and WADA rules an amount of Salbutamol over 1000ng/ml is considered a positive test result.

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