I just wonder do anybody know????
btw a article from this year
Leonardo Piepoli said he fell victim to temptation last summer when he doped during the Tour de France and won a stage using CERA.
In an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian climber expressed strong words of regret and misgivings for his decision to take the banned blood booster that has left his career in tatters.
“It was a moment of weakness, folly, recklessness. The justification: I was trying to fill a hole in my preparation,” he explained. “What I have done, at 37, with a wife and kid, is unconscionable.”
Piepoli was one of four riders busted for CERA during the 2008 Tour. The product, designed to treat anemia, swept into the peloton last year on the assumption that it was undetectable. Unfortunately for Piepoli and others, that assumption was soon proven to be wrong.
Unlike the established anemia treatment EPOGEN, which requires up to three injections per week over a longer cycle to become effective, CERA could be injected just once or twice and be effective for up to a month. CERA’s chemical makeup actually made it easier for anti-doping controllers to find and detect the banned substance.
Piepoli said his road to ruin began with his crash in the 2008 Giro d’Italia that left him with four broken ribs.
“The plan was to come back for the Vuelta – two weeks’ rest than start training again. But (Riccardo) Riccò asks me to join him at the Tour. The idea fascinated me,” he continued. “I would do like I always do, work for my leader, maybe a few wins, never greedy.”
The effects of CERA, however, were better than expected. His original plan was to help Riccò in the Pyrenees and then maybe make a run for the stage to l’Alpe d’Huez in the Tour’s final week.
Instead, feeling better than expected, he attacked and won up Hautacam ahead of then-Saunier Duval teammate Juan Cobo.
“I said to myself, ‘I stole it,’” he said. “I tried to defend it; one time in a career full of sacrifices.”
His world soon collapsed. Riccò, who had already won two stages, tested positive and his Saunier Duval team soon left the race. It was only a matter of time before Piepoli, too, was nabbed in the CERA sting that also netted Stefan Schumacher and Bernhard Kohl, both of the now-defunct Gerolsteiner.
Piepoli found it difficult to confess once it looked apparent that he was headed toward the gallows.
“I had raced since I was nine. I raced not for money, or glory, but for the passion of cycling. I lived the religion of cycling, the cult of suffering and sacrifice,” he said. “When I was starting my career and someone offered me a caffeine pill, I asked my director about it, he said, no, don’t take it, because if you take this, you will take other things. … But I cannot ask to be believed, and that is what depresses me more. After the Giro in 2007, people see us in the supermarket and say, ‘He is the one who is filling the TV newscasts.’ Now I am terribly sorry.”
Piepoli says he will pay the ultimate price for his errors, more than the two-year ban handed down by the Italian cycling federation. He realizes a comeback is unlikely but also admits that any future as a trainer looks grim as well.
“I am a man who was wrong, who can no longer pursue his dreams of racing or being a future coach,” Piepoli said.
Edited by markene2 on 09-09-2009 09:47
