The 25-year-old Italian cyclist Riccardo Ricco who won two stages at Tour de France this year received two years suspension for doping. Ricco honestly admitted his doping offences during Tour de France after he was tested positive last July for Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator (CERA), the higher version of the blood-boosting substance EPO. Experts said that this one of the hardest substances to detect.

According to Ricco, he admitted taking the banned drug with the hope that this will reduce the duration of his suspension. But to his dismay, he received a more severe sanction from the Italian Olympic Committee than to what he actually expected. Ricco’s advisor has presumed for a 20-month sentence subsequent to the cyclist’s admission of guilt as what was also suggested by the anti-doping prosecutor Ettore Torri of Italian Olympic body. Unfortunately, the Italian Olympic body as a whole sentenced him with two years suspension.

According to the report given by Ansa news agency, the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) really reduced the length of Ricco’s doping suspension by six months from the utmost two years however CONI added it with six months upon discovering the meeting of Ricco went to Carlo Santuccione, a physician who had been banned for life from working with any athletes because of acting the major role in a doping affair that is known to be “oil for drugs.”
“I’m very disappointed and bitter. I expected better understanding. But I made a mistake and it is fair that I pay,” Ricco said after learning of his ban.

However, the lawyer of RIcco, Alessandro Sivelli, is persistent to defend his case by indicating that they would appeal to the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. He said, “Something is not working in sports justice, because if Ricco had not collaborated he would have received the same ban, which is two years.” “If he had stayed quiet, Santuccione’s name would never have come out,” he added defensively.

Currently, Ricco was already disqualified to this year’s Tour de France and was also fired by the Saunier-Duval team because of his doping offense. His suspension will be ineffective on July 30, 2010. Meantime, he is prevented from racing in the coming two editions of the Tour as well as Giro d’Italia.

Ricco is one of the competitive cyclists of Italy, winning the sixth and ninth stages of the Tour in superb fashion. He also took the second place in this year’s Giro, following Alberto Contador. He was also the cyclist to bag the Japan Cup in 2006.

A glory consumed by shame, that’s what happened to one of the Italy’s prided cyclist Ricco the night he was held by French police after testing positive for the banned drug.

Anyhow, it seems that the Italian cyclists are being too much involved to doping. Just recently, the Spanish media reported that one of Ricco’s teammate Leonardo Piepoli also admitted that he also used EPO. However, unlike Ricco, Piepoli failed to be detected by any form of drug test. But he was still fired by Saunier-Duval team for violating the team’s ethical code. For now, Piepoli is already under the investigation of CONI.

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