CAS confirm doping ban for Colombian rider Lopez

LAUSANNE: Colombian cyclist Miguel Angel Lopez, third in the Giro and the Vuelta in 2018, will have to serve his four-year ban for doping in full after the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his appeal on Wednesday.

CAS rubber-stamped the suspension imposed by the sport’s governing body the International Cycling Union (UCI) on the 31-year-old in May last year -- backdated to July 25, 2023. Lopez, who won the Tour of Switzerland in 2016 and the Tour of Catalonia in 2019, tested positive for Menotropin -- a hormone which shares properties with growth hormone -- and was found to be in possession of it during the 2022 Giro.

“The Panel is comfortably satisfied that UCI has discharged its burden of proof and unanimously ruled that Mr Lopez possessed a prohibited substance,” read the statement from CAS. “The Appeal filed by Mr Lopez is dismissed and the decision issued by the UCI is fully upheld.

“Mr Lopez remains suspended for a period of ineligibility of four years, commencing on 25 July 2023.” Lopez’s suspension is backdated to his provisional suspension by the UCI. The UCI suspended him after obtaining evidence from police in Spain and the Spanish National Anti-Doping Organisation.

Up to when he was first suspended, Lopez had been riding for third division Team Medellin-EPM, after being fired by the Astana outfit in December 2022. Astana claimed he had links to Marcos Maynar, a Spanish doctor at the heart of a doping investigation at the time by the International Testing Agency (ITA). He had already been provisionally suspended for a week by his team after being arrested at Madrid airport in July 2022.