Tour de France cyclist Luca Paolini gets 18-month doping ban for cocaine positive during last year’s race
UCI say it was a ’non-intentional’ violation and rider claims he took it to get him off sleeping medication
TOUR DE FRANCE cyclist Luca Paolini has been banned for 18 months after testing positive for cocaine during last year’s race.
The 39-year-old admitted he took the drug when he was feeling low at a training camp last June — after he had become addicted to sleeping medicine.
Paolini was kicked out of last year’s three-week race after stage seven having tested positive in a sample taken three days earlier.
It shows another dark side to the sport, where riders can become hooked on prescription drugs that help them feel better between gruelling training stints or stage races.
Paolini’s addiction to the sleeping drug eventually led him to down five or six cups of coffee every morning and eventually on to cocaine.
The Italian has since gone for professional help over his sleeping drug habits — even though it is not a banned substance.
And he admitted that his ex-team doctors at Katusha, who prescribed him the highly addictive drug, had to cut him off because it was becoming such a problem.
Paolini told La Gazzetta: “Then came cocaine, it was inevitable for me. I took it when I was alone at a pre-Tour training camp in mid-June.
“It made me open my eyes to the dependency I had on sleeping medication.
“Benzodiazepine created a bad dependency. I needed it at night to rest, to confront the physical and mental effort of the next day.
Paolini had faced a four-year ban but that was reduced to 18 months by the UCI’s Anti-Doping Tribunal.