A former Spanish professional has presented a claim for hundreds of thousands of euros' worth of damages from his country’s Anti-Doping Agency (CELAD) after Spain’s supreme court ruled last month that a biological passport anomaly was insufficient evidence of a doping offence.
Ibai Salas, who rode for Burgos BH between 2014 and 2018, was banned from racing six years ago as a result of the anomaly, but he took the case to court to try and clear his name.
After an interminable series of appeals and counter-appeals, the case finally reached one of Spain's top courts, the Audiencia Nacional, last month. The court ruled that conclusions drawn from findings by the biological passport, were based on a high degree of probability, rather than absolute certainty, and therefore could not be used to sanction athletes.
According to MARCA, after his exoneration by the Spanish courts, Salas has therefore opted to seek €309,927.5 in compensation.
Salas’ career did not see him take any victories in UCI-ranked races. His best results were two top-ten placings at the Spanish one-day Circuito de Getxo.
Now 32, Salas retired from the sport and now works as a decorator.
The lengthy legal battle began after Salas received a four-year ban by the Spanish anti-doping agency - formerly known as AEPSAD and now known as CELAD. That ban was first rejected by a local court in Madrid, a rejection which was subsequently confirmed by Spain’s Adminstrative Court of Sport (TAD), the court which handles all major cases to do with athletes in the country.
However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) then appealed to the Audiencia Nacional in Spain and to CAS in Switzerland against the TAD’s rejection of the ban.
But while CAS confirmed that WADA’s appeal was valid, in Spain the Audiencia Nacional, rather than backing WADA; confirmed the exoneration of Salas, arguing that Salas had the right to be presumed innocent unless there had been a definitive confirmation of doping, something it said the biological passport could not offer.
According to MARCA, the Audiencia Nacional court ruling on February 2nd argued that analysis of Salas’ biological passport could not determine the precise reason for the anomalous values or what day a potential offence had occurred.
It is not clear how this ruling will affect other biological passport cases in Spain or further afield. The waters are muddied even further, given that Spanish anti-doping legislation in 2021 does recognise the biological passport as valid. However, as a result of winning his case in Spain, if not with CAS, Salas is now suing the Spanish doping agency for compensation.
The UCI instituted the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) in 2008 as a way to detect blood doping, as direct tests for boosters such as EPO were only effective in a short window of time.
Since then, modules to measure markers that can detect the use of anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing hormones have been added to the panel.
It has been viewed since its inception as an effective deterrent to doping, having been significant in several high-profile doping cases over the last sixteen years.
Early this year, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider Franck Bonnamour was suspended by the UCI for “unexplained abnormalities” in his biological passport from the 2022 season. Bonnamour was the first WorldTour rider to have been caught by the biological passport in a decade.
In 2019, Operation Aderlass uncovered a blood-doping ring that led to bans for Bjorn Thurau, Georg Preidler, Stefan Denifl, Borut Bozic, Kristian Koren, Primin Lang and Kristijan Durasek, all except one of which had shown no abnormalities in their ABP, possibly due to tests not showing the effects of smaller, more frequent doses of EPO employed in a process called 'micro-dosing'.
The case led many to question the effectiveness of the ABP.
