Success – at what price?

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He was cleared by the UCI but president Pat McQuaid said the Spaniard had been singled out by testers as a potential future offender.

… Patrik Sinkewitz has been dismissed by the T-Mobile team after withdrawing a request to have his B-sample tested. The German cyclist was suspended after it emerged during the Tour de France that he tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone on 8 June.

Sinkewitz revealed on Tuesday that he had used a testosterone gel in training and said he accepted the test result. "It was a big mistake and irresponsible toward my team, colleagues, the sponsor and the whole of cycling," he admitted.  Sinkewitz, 26, said he had used the gel on his upper arm "without thinking, or simply in great stupidity, on the evening before the doping test".

After he declined to have his B-sample tested, T-Mobile spokesman Christian Frommert said: "For the team, this means that it is a positive doping case – that means he will be fired."

Ahead of the Tour de France, Sinkewitz had, like all competitors in the race, signed the International Cycling Union's new anti-doping charter.

The blame game

The World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) has been at the forefront of the International Olympic Committee’s attempt at ridding the world of sport from drug cheats. The revelations of the BALCO debacle that remains in the spotlight via the close monitoring of the Barry Bonds saga remains one of the crucial issues in the race by many to attain success at whatever cost.

The BALCO undertaking appears to have been a deliberate effort to create design performance enhancing substances for different athletes to guarantee them success.