Positive Puerta?

"Dopage - RG - c'était Puerta," blares L'Equipe today. Last month, the French newspaper had alleged that seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong's 1999 sample tested positive for doping. This month, it announces that the Argentine tennis player Mariano Puerta--world #10, 2005 French Open finalist, and #1 seed at this week's Japan Open--had tested positive for etilefrine. The drug, a stimulant, is on the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited list.

Earlier in the year another Argentinian, Guillermo Cañas, tested positive for a masking agent and was banned for two years under the WADA policy the ATP had recently adopted. Under this policy, when a player tests positive a second time for banned substances, the punishment is a lifetime ban. In 2003, Puerta tested positive for clenbuteral, an anabolic steroid, and was suspended for nine months. This second positive test, if confirmed by an independent panel, may make Puerta the first player in the history of tennis to be banned for life from the sport.

This allegation follows last week's hot doping stories:

• a positive sample (the same sample now identified as Puerta's) was provided by one of the players in the second week of the French Open,
• US player Alex Bogomolov, Jr. was suspended for one and a half months for testing positive for asthma medication and not having a Therapeutic Use Exemption to go with it, and
• the International Tennis Federation is taking over the responsibility for drug testing on the men's tour.

TRACKING THE STORY: I first encountered this breaking news story in Tennis Warehouse; one person had spotted the story in the French version of Yahoo! Sports and created a thread announcing his discovery. Being the inquisitive (and frankly tennis-obsessive) person that I am, I ran the Reuters article from Yahoo! France through Babelfish and tried to make it readable. From there, I went to Men's Tennis Forums and found a similar thread. Not more than fifteen minutes later, a poster from MTF provided a link to the Eurosport English-language article.

UPDATE: Puerta denies taking the banned stimulant. Also, according to the Reuters article reproduced on the BBC Sport website, Puerta claims he has not been notified by either the ATP or ITF that he had tested positive at all. "After the [previous] positive I've got to be very careful," he says. "I can't even take an orange juice."

posted by Noelle De Guzman @ 4:24 PM