With the hearing in Lausanne now concluded, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has this evening confirmed that a final decision in the Alejandro Valverde hearing will not be given until sometime in March.
The three-day appeal was initiated by Valverde’s legal team, which was seeking to overturn the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI)'s decision to ban him for two years from racing in Italy. It had sanctioned him as it believed he had links to the Operación Puerto doping affair.
A statement issued by CAS this evening gave no indications as to what should be expected. It commented simply on efforts made to increase the penalty that Valverde could face if he is unsuccessful in his appeal.
"The Panel considered that the requests filed by UCI and WADA to suspend Alejandro Valverde world-wide for a period of two years could not be entertained by the CAS given that they were outside the scope of the present arbitration procedure (regarding [the] validity or not of the suspension of Valverde on Italian soil)."
certainly has been around the theatre for a while. do you see the submission of a dna sample as a stall tactic (in that coni have already matched dna to the puerto samples) or is valverde really innocent? not knowing enough about sample degradation over time, is he banking that the puerto samples are so corrupted by now that no match can be made?
