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Positive test Tour de France rider tests positive for EPOPosted: Sunday July 27, 2003 8:37 AMPARIS (AP) -- A racer in the Tour de France has tested positive for the banned endurance drug EPO, but the rider is not a race leader, a Tour director said Sunday. The racer's identity was being withheld because he has asked for a second follow-up test which has yet to be carried out. "This positive test for EPO was carried out in mid-Tour and up to now is the only rider to test positive on the Tour," said deputy Tour director Daniel Baal. "We now must wait for the follow-up test that the rider asked for. But I can tell you that it is not one of the race leaders," he told the Associated Press. That apparently ruled out Lance Armstrong, expected to take his fifth Tour title at the finish on Sunday. The rider's sporting director was informed of the test result Thursday, but he did not withdraw the rider from the race, said sources who spoke of condition of anonymity. The rider's team was not immediately known. The last rider to test positive for EPO at the Tour was Spaniard Txema del Olmo, of the Euskaltel team, in 2001. He withdrew from the race and was subsequently banned from competing in France for three years. Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc said Saturday, the penultimate day of the race, said a positive test would show that doping controls were working. "If we have a doping case or two, as I've already said, it would not be as grave as all that," he told reporters. "It would mean, alas, that the sport must continue to live with the presence of guys who do not respect the rules. Well, we detect them, punish them and exclude them." As part of anti-doping efforts, hundreds of blood tests were carried out on riders during the three-week Tour, but race organizers have said all results were normal. Before the three-week Tour started July 5, the French Cycling Federation said 80 to 90 tests would be carried out specifically to target traces of EPO, or erythropoietin, which enhances stamina by increasing the number of oxygen-carrying red bloods cells. Organizers also said that every day of this centennial Tour, between six and 10 riders, including each stage winner and the overall race leader, would undergo urine tests. Tour organizers are doubly keen to stamp out doping -- a stigma that has dogged the Tour since the Festina team was expelled from the race in 1998 after customs agents found a hoard of banned drugs in a trainer's car.
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