Paris - There is something fishy about France's latest probe into the former team of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.
Leaving no stones - or in this case, syringes - unturned in the battle against doping is commendable. Unless, of course, the investigation proves to be little more than a vendetta against the cyclist some French love to hate, convinced as they are that the cancer-survivor can only have triumphed through doping.
The facts: After this year's Tour, French police descended on a waste management firm, Cosmolys, that many teams use to dispose of their medical trash - bloody bandages, used sticking plasters, etc. The officers seized 15 containers, according to a French judicial official who was happy to brief reporters about the probe but not to be identified by name.
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The officers went through the boxes. All of them checked out except one that the judicial official says was labeled as belonging to Armstrong's Astana team. The official says the box was stuffed with a "large quantity" of syringes and, most alarming, equipment for doing intravenous infusions. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, such IV drips are banned without a compelling medical need.
'The view at the UCI is that AFLD officials are unreliable publicity hounds' This paraphernalia is now being inspected by a laboratory, Toxlab, which also worked on the investigation into Princess Diana's death. It is looking at whether the syringes contained substances banned for athletes and, if so, whether blood specks on some needles can, through DNA analysis, be traced to riders.
Now for the troubling aspects.
The probe comes amid a public dispute between the UCI, which governs world cycling, and France's anti-doping agency, known by its French initials AFLD.
Ideally, they should be partners. But they don't trust each other. Officials at the AFLD suspect the UCI isn't doing everything it could against doping.
'I'm confident that our team has been racing clean'
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