French anti-doping lab suspended by WADA over "analytical issues"

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has provisionally suspended a Paris anti-doping laboratory pending disciplinary proceedings.

In a statement, WADA said it had suspended accreditation of the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory of the National Anti-Doping Organisation of France and that this was due to analytical issues self-reported to WADA by the laboratory itself.

National Anti-Doping Organisation of France general secretary Mathieu Teoran told the BBC that the issue related to contamination of a sampling robot.

"Appropriate corrective action was immediately taken and all potentially affected samples underwent reanalysis," he said.

The provisional suspension, which took effect on September 24, prohibits the laboratory from carrying out any anti-doping activities, including all analyses of urine and blood samples.

WADA said that during the provisional suspension, samples that have not yet been analysed will be securely transported to another WADA-accredited laboratory, as will samples currently undergoing a confirmation procedure and any samples for which an adverse analytical finding has been reported.

In 2011, Floyd Landis, the American cyclist who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title after failing a drugs test, was convicted by a French court of hacking into the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory’s computer records in an attempt to gather evidence to try and clear his name.