Another positive at T-Mobile at the Deutschland Tour

Langenberg

Apparenlty, Bernucci has taken Sibutramin (reduces appetite apparently). Article is in German but the pic shows him being chaperoned to the doping control at the Deutschland Tour.

http://radsportnews.net/2007/bernucci_0409.shtml

vermooten

I only post Google's translation because of the accidental name they give another shamed ex-T-Mobile rider at the end of the article:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... en&ie=UTF8

Titanium

The guy was taking Ectiva, a weight loss drug for the obese. Pressure on pros to stay slim can be big but during the middle of a stage race? Something smells bad here...

T-Mobile have a real problem now. We keep hearing stories about how they are clean yet the backroom staff is unchanged and rumors say Zabel's going to join for 2008.

Now it seems they can't get the clean message through to their riders. This message should be two-fold: tell us what is inside your suitcase and be responsible and check if you take any medicines, supplements as a dumb mistake can bring down the whole team.

Langenberg

I must admit, I don´t think that Tmobile are worse than other teams... they are probably better... but given that their standards are supposedly higher, every positive test is so much more disappointing.

top_bhoy

Titanium wrote:

T-Mobile have a real problem now. We keep hearing stories about how they are clean yet the backroom staff is unchanged and rumors say Zabel's going to join for 2008.

The other disconcerting thing about T-Mobile is not so much that many in the backroom team retained - which is understandable to an extent in that to replace them with suitable experienced and clean alternates would be difficult - but that those who pleaded guilty and exorcised their souls, were actively defended in public by the new current management. It seemed as nothing had changed from the 'bad old days'. Only a root and branch routing of the current team structure, not necessarily of the riders, will make me start to believe that T-Mobile has changed.

timoid.

Top_Bhoy wrote:

Titanium wrote:

T-Mobile have a real problem now. We keep hearing stories about how they are clean yet the backroom staff is unchanged and rumors say Zabel's going to join for 2008.

The other disconcerting thing about T-Mobile is not so much that many in the backroom team retained - which is understandable to an extent in that to replace them with suitable experienced and clean alternates would be difficult - but that those who pleaded guilty and exorcised their souls, were actively defended in public by the new current management. It seemed as nothing had changed from the 'bad old days'. Only a root and branch routing of the current team structure, not necessarily of the riders, will make me start to believe that T-Mobile has changed.

Its no feckin good holding up your hands and saying "yes I doped and now I'm reformed". They should have all had to say:

what they took
why they took it (e.g.performance enhancement, masking agent etc.)
where they got it
how they adminstered it
when they adminstered it (during training, during a race)
who else knew

and

how they avoided the controls

If the above information is not forthcoming then they should be swept out of cycling.

sing_for_absolution

Another rider formerly of an Italian team . hmmmmmmmmm

top_bhoy

Nationality of either team or rider has nothing to do with doping - their all equally culpable irrespective of origins. ie Germans, Italians, Spanish, Kazaks, etc....even the French! :shock:

bipedal

I read somewhere (velonews???) that this has only recently been added to the list of banned substances and that he had been happily taking it for four years... apparently he may only face a slap on the wrists and an official warning.

it seems he got fired more because he was taking something the team doctors didn't know about, if they had known they could have warned him that it had been added to the banned list

bipedal

it was cyclingnews:

The 27 year-old told the team that he had been taking the product under the brand name of Ectiva for four years and did not know that it had been added last year to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) list of prohibited substances. He purchased it over the counter at a pharmacy in Italy to help keep his weight under control.

If it is ruled that Sibultramine is not used for performance enhancement, a first violation carries a minimum punishment of a warning, and a maximum of a one-year suspension.

"We do not know if this was an attempt at performance enhancement or just poor judgment. But we know it is unacceptable that riders take any medication without the approval of the team doctor. It's a clear violation of our code of conduct and we act now on that basis," said General Manager Bob Stapleton on the team's website, t-mobile-team.com.

LangerDan

Sibultramine falls into the (WADA) category S6 as it is considered a stimulant. There is also some anecdotal evidence that it may have served as a masking agent.

If Bernucci's explanation is true, what sort of dumb bunny "forgets" to advise his team medical staff about medications and supplements - over-the-counter or not. Professional sportspeople aren't always the sharpest tools in the box but how come he didn't seem to know about T-Mobs new beginning? Maybe he was away in Mexico when the team gave the "Mmmm, drugs are bad" lecture.

iainf72

T-Mobile - Proof, if it was ever needed that you cannot polish a turd. <- this is really a word with a T that the filter changes.

The team is a joke - It's Phonak II.

drenkrom

I find this positive to be very very low on the cycling scandal-o-meter, although he really should have advised the team he was taking the stuff. The rules are there, and when you break them there are consequences, fine. But what surprises me is that, even with the super test regimen T-Mobile put in place, all their positives this year, apart from Gonchar, came from "official" tests. Don't the T-Mobile tests pick up testosterone? or did Sinkewitz take it only on the day before the training camp test? Bernucci had admitedly been taking this for 4 years! It really should've popped up in the team tests, no? It's all fine and dandy doing blood-volume tests and stuff like that, but if your tests don't find the basic doping products the UCI or WADA tests do, what's the point?

iainf72

T-Mobile don't do any additional doping tests.

Blood volume but no "conventional" tests. They leave that to the usual ADA's, because that works really well. :shock:

Langenberg

LangerDan wrote:

Sibultramine falls into the (WADA) category S6 as it is considered a stimulant. There is also some anecdotal evidence that it may have served as a masking agent.

Interesting as in this case something slightly higher on the scandal-o-metre (to quote drenkrom) could be, eehh, masked.

What could Sibultramine act as a masking agent for?

dave_1

David Millar said in the summer of 07 to throw out some of the trash , the former cheats, but keep some...but being in team management at pro tour level should come with one criteria-confess or clear off and leave the sport if you have the 1990s in your resume as a rider or manager as it quite possibkle you have had involvement in blood doping. No way sjhould former ONCE riders be managing teams or any of that shower from the 90s really. Mottet, Lemond, Hampsten fine...but they don´t get into managemebnt it seems...they are the kind of guys who should be running the sport

iainf72

Should T-Mobile be suspended from the ProTour?

Or suspend themselves for a period?

2 offiical positives this year and the Honchar case.


If I were a betting man, I could say they will have another positive in the next 12 months and it will be a name who everyone swears blind is clean.

rustychisel

well, go on, you've stuck your neck out this far...

DaveyL

LangerDan wrote:

Sibultramine falls into the (WADA) category S6 as it is considered a stimulant. There is also some anecdotal evidence that it may have served as a masking agent.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q= ... arch&meta=

I'd love to hear that anecdotal evidence

DaveyL

D'oh, no hits 'cause it is Sibutramine, not Sibultramine...

Still keen to know what it masks. Taking a weight loss drug meant for obese people to keep your weight down during the one-week stage race is a little odd.

LangerDan

DaveyL wrote:

LangerDan wrote:

Sibutramine falls into the (WADA) category S6 as it is considered a stimulant. There is also some anecdotal evidence that it may have served as a masking agent.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q= ... arch&meta=

I'd love to hear that anecdotal evidence

The drug is sibutramine (i.e. no "L" before the T") so the search turns up nothing as you've entered it.

Reformat the query and one of the links turns up this paragraph for, of all things, competitive dancing which also appear to be covered by WADA.

It all began at the 2006 German Open held recently in Stuttgart. Routine drug testing indicated the presence in one athlete of Sibutramine, banned because it has been known to be used as a masking agent for other drugs.

I'm doing a little more digging to see if there is anything further. I'm not sure how an amphetamine masks something more "serious" but I've always been very suspicious of positives for odd materials. Probenicid, anyone?

DaveyL

Competitive dancing? Fantastic. I wonder if there are any flamenco dancers on Fuentes's list.

What was the weight-control pil Warnie was taking?

iainf72

I love this comment from cyclingnews yesterday

"I made two errors," he noted to La Gazzetta dello Sport in his first interview since being released. "I took Ectiva, that contains Sibultramine, from 2004 [on]. I did not know that from 2006 the substance was inserted in WADA's [World Anti-Doping Agency] doping list, and that was the first mistake. At the first team meeting this year, in Mallorca, I notified Stephan Prettin that I was using this product. However, the medical staff changed and I did not communicate anything to the new medical team. My second negligence."

So he told the medical staff at the new super clean T-Mobile earlier in the year and they didn't pick up on it? Okay, I know they've been changed but surely they would've noted it somewhere?

I wonder if Pat Sinkewitz said "I'm using this testosterone gel" and they said "okie dokie"?