UCI's difficulty with laws of sanctioning cyclists for doping: "Riders take advantage of the night"

Recently, the colleagues of MARCA published an extremely important article about one of the key cases in cycling today in the fight against doping, Operation ILEX. In the new information provided, it is explained that the cases in Spain have extra difficulty in sanctioning the riders.

The first, and the most serious of all, is the one that refers to the law that dictates that from 11:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. you cannot go to the cyclists' homes to make them undergo the corresponding 'anti-doping' controls. All this for a matter that concerns the privacy of each one.

What does this mean? That this period of time is key to being able to cheat and test negative in controls by ingesting doping substances that can disappear from the body eight hours after being ingested. "For example, you can 'prescribe' a substance to ingest at 23:01h that there is no longer any trace of it in the body at six o'clock in the morning. This way they take advantage of the night," an expert told MARCA.

It is true that on occasion the UCI has managed to carry out controls in the middle of the night, but all after having obtained the relevant permissions from the authorities. For example, a case that fulfills what was said a few moments ago was that of Greg Henderson, former Lotto rider between 2012 and 2016.