The Chef has the reciept !

northernneil

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/astana-have-receipt-for-contadors-steak-says-cook?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=news_headlines

the farmer must be worried now, feeding those cows illegal plastic

Pross

Wow, poor old Bertie all those coincidences going against him resulted in him just happening to have a contaminated steak on the only day the team weren't allowed to cook in the hotel kitchen. Still, as they have the receipt they'll be able to soon trace everything back and he'll prove his innocence so no harm done

Pokerface

Now the chef is saying that he asked the friend to bring the meat? Originally Contador said HE asked the dude to bring it.


I'm confused. Or maybe it's just a mix-up in the writing.

LangerDan

Apparently the receipt is for $88,000, has the word "Sysmex" scribbled out and "Steak" written above it in red crayon.

mididoctors

LangerDan wrote:

Apparently the receipt is for $88,000, has the word "Sysmex" scribbled out and "Steak" written above it in red crayon.

pet cat eric

Mccaria

Lets play - who has the receipt.

The chef says Astana has the receipt (and could find it if they wanted to).

Contador's press officer says :

Vidarte told L’Èquipe. “We have the bill from the shop in Irun where López-Cerrón bought the meat.”

Pross

I wonder how many steaks a restaurant buys in a day? I'm sure no-one would notice if one of their receipts had disappeared and turned up in the hands of the cycling team that their chef also worked for.

Mettan

I knew they'd ''find'' some clown willing to assist in getting Bert off the hook. And they've also had a month or two to prepare (and test) a nice piece of beef with just the right amount of clen in it

northernneil

it would easy to knock up a 'fake' receipt really easily, just need to work out how they do the traceability back to poor mable now

Gingerflash

Ah well, if Contador's banned, at least he can get a refund on the meat.

calvjones

Burgos? I thought this Butcher was in Irun?

Kléber

Exactly, the receipt doesn't matter. It's checking the beef. In theory the "beef trail" is watertight because if the cow was doped with Clen then you can go and find where every cut of meat went and test it.

Any independent agency tasked with this will come to a conclusion quite quickly as to whether the cow is guilty of not.

Radioactiveman

Somewhere in spain a farmer is doping cows like his life depended upon it.

In the mean time the accountant is looking through the "contingency" file of receipts for meat bought in foreign countries of dubious repute.

Kléber

But under the EU beef tracking system any cow laced with something can't just be sneaked into the food chain, or this would take an incredible amount of organisation (and tin foil hats) given the paperwork and subterfuge.

Because if Contador did eat a bad steak then public health requires that the meat is traced back and the farmer who did this is going to get the police knocking on his barn door.

northernneil

Kléber wrote:

But under the EU beef tracking system any cow laced with something can't just be sneaked into the food chain, or this would take an incredible amount of organisation (and tin foil hats) given the paperwork and subterfuge.

Because if Contador did eat a bad steak then public health requires that the meat is traced back and the farmer who did this is going to get the police knocking on his barn door.

or as we speak a farmer is accepting hefty brown paper envelopes and turning a blind eye whilst men in white suits enter his field ..... (conspiracy theory by the way)

Mccaria

This feels like we are going into the surreal. But given that beef tracking is primarily done to be able to trace disease - which can be passed from animal to animal (foot and mouth, blue tongue etc), Clenbutomakesyoudribble is articifially added to the livestock - so how do you track this ?

You would need the farmer to be following the same procedure across herds (given the beef stock fattened up and slaughtered July 10 will be long gone), or evidence of the product on the farm, or a residual sample of the animal culled at the time ? Any semi-literate farmer in that part of Spain would by now have got rid of and certainly stopped using the substance and I assume as with humans it will no longer be present in the animal after a couple of days ?

flanners1

What a total farce, you think with his money and the time they had to concoct a better story they could have fabricated a better version,no?

hugh1982

Is there any news of anyone else from Astana being tested that day? If so, would be interesting to know whether they also had steak!

northernneil

hugh1982 wrote:

Is there any news of anyone else from Astana being tested that day? If so, would be interesting to know whether they also had steak!

Yes, Vino was the only other rider from Astana tested that day, but he did not eat the meat

Mettan

I can see Contador's ''people'' finding him a restaurant that sources its meat from outside the EU ?? - they might ''find'' some clen meat in some dusty country with little controls (speaking loosely of course ^^) - either way, I suspected they'd bumble along this wretched cheaters path.

shinyhelmut

In an interview with Catalan newspaper Sport on July 23, Astana chef Paco Olalla spoke of purchasing “beef tenderloin in the market in Pau”

It so happened that I had also had a conversation with [Vuelta a Castilla y León organiser] José Luis López Cerrón, who is a very good friend of mine and was coming to the race from Spain.

"He asked me if I needed anything and I asked him if he could bring some steak, because the meat in France is not the same.

Same guy, different recollection.

Kléber

It's possible he bought meat twice. Someone looked into this and he want to the Pau market early on and then López Cerrón visited a couple of days later.

Mettan

I hear Contador's people have been nominated for next years Booker prize

shinyhelmut

Kléber wrote:

It's possible he bought meat twice. Someone looked into this and he want to the Pau market early on and then López Cerrón visited a couple of days later.

Doping apologist!

Pokerface

The whole story of the meat is most likely TRUE - the part of the story that the meat was brought by a friend from Spain. I can buy that part of the story.

What will likely turn out to be a fabrication is that the meat contained the clenbuterol and that this was the source of the positive test. I suspect they used the delivered meat story (which was true) as an attempt to cover up the result as they didn't have any other excuses to fall back on.

But as Kleber says - the origin of the meat and whether it was tainted can be verified (independently) and so far this has not happened (maybe this is the news he is referring to?).

I assume that someone may have actually traced the meat back to it's origin and had it tested - only to find it clean (as we all suspect) and this news will come out soon.

Or not. What do I know? :oops:

robert-sb

Pokerface wrote:

I assume that someone may have actually traced the meat back to it's origin and had it tested - only to find it clean (as we all suspect) and this news will come out soon.

This is the bit that I think is going to be hard to prove either way. Suppose the trail does lead back to the butcher. Is he really still going to have meat from the same cow two months later ? What if it was a mistake and the farmer put the clenbuterol in a little too late in relation to when the beast was going to market and that normally he adheres to the rules ?

I don't think this can ever be proved one way or another. In the absence of incontrovertible proof that this is where it came from, then, in my opinion, it is a straightforward 2 year ban and lose the TdF.

alanmcn1

Did he transport it in a blood bag due to a shortage of plastic carrier bags....................

Kléber

robert-sb wrote:

This is the bit that I think is going to be hard to prove either way. Suppose the trail does lead back to the butcher. Is he really still going to have meat from the same cow two months later ?

The butcher might have sold some cuts but others could have gone into freezers. It's possible the bad bits went to a pet food factory. In theory it can be tracked down.

bazbadger

So, meat is SO bad in France it requires someone to bring some from the neighboring country.

Reads like the meat was just for Contador, did no-one else have it? no one at all? Did the chef cook it just for Contador? Or have I missed something?

The whole thing about finding the receipt is strange too. You'd have thought that would the first thing they would have done right after Contador tested positive so they could back up their claims and wave the receipt at the media.

Doesn't look convincing to me right now.

calvjones

Another 4 Astana riders ate it but were not tested

Vino ate 'bad' French meat and was tested

Bertie has thus p1ssed off the farmers and butchers of both France and Spain. Franky, I'd rather have taken 2 years on the chin :shock:

bazbadger

calvjones wrote:

Another 4 Astana riders ate it but were not tested

Vino ate 'bad' French meat and was tested

Bertie has thus p1ssed off the farmers and butchers of both France and Spain. Franky, I'd rather have taken 2 years on the chin :shock:

Ah, thanks. That's convenient about the four other riders, but that's testing for you I suppose.