Franco Pellizotti may have been forgiven, for thinking he’d got off scot free, after the UCI brought him to court for abnormalities on his biological passport.The Italian has been convicted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, after the UCI appealed the original decision. Pellizotti was provisionally suspended, before the 2009 Giro d’Italia, and has had all of his results since then removed.
He had been cleared by an Italian court in October and even went as far as threatening to sue the UCI. The cycling governing body has managed to get their own back, after the CAS lumped the Liquigas rider with an 115,000 Euro fine. The UCI are applauding this as a success for the biological passport; as much as it is a success, it is another case of one court saying one thing and another saying something else. If a rider is to be banned, they should have a total ban, and there shouldn’t be so many decisions turned over.
