Giro hero Sella caught out

It doesn't take too much to get noticed by the wrong people. Win a few stages, especially in a dramatic way and you can make a real name for yourself. And get 'targeted' by the drug cops.

Winner of three stages and the climber's competition of the Giro d'Italia, Italian Emanuele Sella, has been found positive in an out-of-competition doping control issued by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on July 23, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport. The 27 year-old from Vicenza was found to have used the same third generation EPO – CERA (Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator) – that Riccardo Riccò admitted to using in the Tour de France. 

Ricco, now Sella. It's certainly a good advert for CERA. It works. 

Giro opens a can of worms

What a can of worms the 2008 Giro has opened, by excluding 4 ProTour teams. You'd think that there was something intrinsically "wrong" with these teams, to exclude them in this overtly political way. They are ProTour teams after all, and effectively part of the premier league of cycling. So exclusion becomes a sporting issue, and it matters. The obvious question arises - is it for "drug issues", a taint that seemingly can't be overcome? Or something else?

One such "something else" is the tendency of some teams to use the Giro as training for Le Tour. Surely that includes quiet a few other teams, not just this lot.

Read the CN story here: Angelo Zomegnan, the head of Giro organizer RCS Sport, said that the decision was not simple. "There were many requests and too many problems weighing on the past histories major teams related to doping," he told Gazzetta dello Sport. "This has not been an easy decision, and we have had to leave out large teams like Astana and the illustrious Italians Stefano Garzelli [Acqua & Sapone], Marco Pinotti [Team High Road] and Pietro Caucchioli [Crédit Agricole]."

And the UCI reaction is here: UCI President Pat McQuaid reacted Wednesday to the omission of four ProTour teams from the Giro d'Italia start list by race organizer RCS. He said it was like "taking a step back 20 years."

The excluded teams are Astana, High Road (formerly T-Mobile), Credit Agricole and Bouygues Telecom (all ProTour) plus the Professional Continental team Acqua & Sapone of former Giro champion Stefano Garzelli. That's a big chunk of talented riders to remove from contention.