12 years for Ricco

frenchfighter

Ricco gets 12 year ban and 3months - 3years in prison

MILAN (AP) — Italian cyclist Riccardo Ricco has been banned for 12 years by the country's anti-doping tribunal for his second doping offense.
The tribunal agreed on Thursday with the length of the ban proposed by the Italian Olympic Committee in October.
Ricco hasn't raced since he was rushed to a hospital after falling ill at his home near Modena in February. The doctor who treated him reportedly told police the cyclist confessed to using tranfusions of his own blood, which he allegedly kept in his home refrigerator.
Ricco had been banned for 20 months after testing positive for the blood-booster CERA following his victories in two mountain stages at the 2008 Tour de France.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

ddraver

Well...

I'm never happy to say it, but good!

rick_chasey

Any criminal sentences?

I imagine they're more relevant.

Yellow Peril

Oh ye of little faith.

This is Ricco we are talking about not some amateur ban avoider like Contador. You think he's dead and gone but he'll sit up from behind the settee with the coathanger sticking out of his head Halloween style. :twisted:

cajun_cyclist

I don't think it will change but it's in a lot of sports at the same time, especially endurance sports.

BikingBernie

Ricco hasn't raced since he was rushed to a hospital after falling ill at his home near Modena in February. The doctor who treated him reportedly told police the cyclist confessed to using tranfusions of his own blood, which he allegedly kept in his home refrigerator.

Bloody amateur dopers! If he had paid for the services of Ferrari (or someone like him) as Armstrong and many others did, he would, in all probability, have got away with it, been able to push the doping envelope to its limits and and avoided nearly killing himself into the bargain.

Then again the real crime is getting caught. No?

shinyhelmut

Sadly yes.

A ban that keeps Ricco away from cycling is the best thing that can happen to him, however I'm not convinced he won't still find a way to self destruct anyhow.

I hope he won't be joining Pantani, Jiminez et al.

Jez mon

Fundamentally, unsure of how to feel about Ricco, he just seemed to have a face that people loved to hate, but personally, I can't bring myself to despise him. It's been documented that he was doping at a very young age, and anyone who is willing to carry out their own blood transfusions without any proper medical supervision is properly mental.

Ultimately, he's been failed by those around him consistently.

rick_chasey

Jez mon wrote:

Fundamentally, unsure of how to feel about Ricco, he just seemed to have a face that people loved to hate, but personally, I can't bring myself to despise him. It's been documented that he was doping at a very young age, and anyone who is willing to carry out their own blood transfusions without any proper medical supervision is properly mental.

Ultimately, he's been failed by those around him consistently.

That's the lefty in you coming out :P

It's bad that he wanted to dope. It's worse that no-one questioned him. Then again, maybe they did and he went on and did it anyway. You'd think a ban having been busted in the Tour is signal enough. Millar got it, Basso got it.

But you're right. That someone somewhere down in the process of doping, which surely involves more than one or two people, didn't do something about it is shameful. That's, more generally, the most shameful part of doping.

Seems a pretty low risk operation for anyone but the riders. Then again, in theory they can stand the most to gain.

No_Ta_Doctor

Jez mon wrote:

Fundamentally, unsure of how to feel about Ricco, he just seemed to have a face that people loved to hate, but personally, I can't bring myself to despise him. It's been documented that he was doping at a very young age, and anyone who is willing to carry out their own blood transfusions without any proper medical supervision is properly mental.

Ultimately, he's been failed by those around him consistently.

He's not the sharpest syringe in the doctor's bag. he needs to be out of cycling for his own sake and that of the sport. But it' not like he's having a TdF wiped off for a minor infringement that was possibly (probably?) caused by serious orgnaised systematic doping.