Ricco busted for CERA? Well, Landis was busted for adrenalin

The shock departure of the Saunier Duval team from the Tour de France thanks to an alleged Adverse Analytical Finding by Riccardo Ricco is making sports journalists tap out hasty copy.

According to the Eurosport/Yahoo coverage of the Ricco story “the latest doping scandal is a new black eye for the biggest race in the sport, which had hoped to recover from two successive years of outrages involving performance enhancing drugs.”

The piece then said: “In 2006 Tour winner Floyd Landis was stripped of his yellow jersey after testing positive for heightened levels of adrenaline.”

Which is a load of cobblers (and will no doubt be pulled from the story real soon). But journos get rushes of blood to the head too, so it’s excusable.

To Ricco. What’s he accused of? It’s just the A test leaked so far but reports are saying he took CERA, Continuous Erythropoeitin Receptor Activator, the so-called ‘Super EPO’.

Given the fact anti-doping was always going to be super-hot at this year’s ‘clean’ Tour, any rider stupid enough to dope needs to be hung, drawn and quartered. Once proven, of course.