CAS hits Italian cyclist Priamo hit with four-year ban

Former CSF Group Navigare rider Matteo Priamo has been hit with a four-year ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne Switzerland for providing EPO derivative CERA to team-mate Emanuele Sella.

Under World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules, which provide for two-year ban for a first doping offence, that is increased to four years where the cyclist is supplying doping products to others and not just using them himself.

The case went to world sport’s highest tribunal after CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee, appealed to CAS after its own anti-doping tribunal had cleared Priamo due to insufficient evidence.

The latter’s ban takes effect from 27 February this year, the date of the original hearing, meaning that he cannot race until 2013.
Sella, who had initially pointed the finger at Priamo, has already a more lenient one-year ban earlier this year as a result of his co-operation.

Priamo won the sixth stage of the 2008 Giro d’Italia, and the CAS’s decision means that four winners - all of them Italian -  of seven of the race’s stages have now been banned for doping offences.

Sella won three stages and took the mountains classification, while Saunier Duval-Scott rider Riccardo Riccò won two stages and finished second on the podium behind Alberto Contador, but tested positive later in the year at the Tour de France.

The fourth rider is Gabriele Bosisio of LPR Brakes – Farnese Vini, who won one stage and briefly donned the race leader’s jersey. Bosisio tested positive this September and has been suspended by the UCI while Italian authorities prepare their case against him.