Mr Becca - What Are You On?

Note for non-UK readers: the phrase "What are you on?", normally pronounced in a very low-class accent, like "Wot ah yew orn?" is heavy sarcasm, indicating that the person concerned must be deeply and horribly affected by drugs of some kind, to have said the things that they said.

According to a report in Velonation, the results of Contador's arbitration hearing have been delayed yet again, this time until at least the end of January, and the report blames the media.

Last week, the media reports to which they are referring were to do with WADA ("War Against Drugs -Again") allegedly having one of their witnesses barred from speaking.

But now it appears that the fault lies with dear Mr Becca, who apparently has been suggesting that Saxo Bank held their training camp in Israel merely to influence the Israeli member of the CAS panel.

Presumably he means that holding a training camp must bring money into that country.

But would it? Unless the CAS panel member concerned actually owned the hotel, what benefit would he get? Training camps must cost the team a fortune: there are hotel fees, all those bikes to be shipped, bodies to be shipped, trucks and support vehicles to be shipped: there must be insurance, medical support, your own chefs, PR, photographers, etc, but that doesn't really benefit the country, does it? OK, they buy fuel and presumably some of their food (but not the meat, ha ha!) locally, but I can't see how one person would benefit from this.

So what is Mr Becca playing at?

I have no idea: the only thing that comes to mind is "stirring for the sake of it."

If he somehow hopes to be seen as a nice person, I can't help thinking this is not the way to go about it.

So, thanks to Mr Becca and the media, poor old Contador is on the hook for another couple of weeks. And apparently he has also now been summoned to appear in the dreaded Operation Puerto case: in case you've forgotten about this one, it's the big drugging ring in Spain that was "broken" back in May 2006, where Spanish Police launched a huge investigation against a Dr Fuentes, who was responsible for running it.

Several pro cyclists were implicated, and several teams were badly affected by the operation, not least being the newly formed Astana team, who were then barred from the Tour in 2006. Contador was, of course, in this team.  Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Michele Scarponi were all found guilty of doping offences. It was a huge operation, and the repercussions are still rattling around.

And now they're calling Contador back to appear in court - as far as I can remember, because there was talk that a bag of blood with his initials on it was amongst the material seized by the Spanish police.  This is all a bit feeble, considering that, for example, Michele Scarponi's blood etc was labelled "Zapatero", and Jorg Jashke admitted to being "Bella" (*snigger, snigger*),  and you would rather expect that anyone doing anything illegal like this would take great care to have some sort of code name for each participant, wouldn't they?

Well, I'm now feeling sorry for Contador - as if he hasn't suffered enough questioning and waiting, and now he has to go through it all again.