Is Tenerife still a doping hotspot?
The island of Tenerife, and especially the lunar landscape of Mount Teide, has been a favourite training camp destination for Grand Tour riders for decades, writes Chris Marshallbell. But it is also the place where, famously, Lance Armstrong had illicit blood transfusions and took performance-enhancing drugs, comforted by the fact that drug testers rarely visit the island.
The scarcity of testing on Tenerife was highlighted again in 2014 when Froome revealed that he had had just one outof-competition doping control on Teide in three seasons, publicly lambasting the paucity of controls. In 2015, he told The
Telegraph: “I wanted to know that all our competition is being tested, especially with so many teams using Tenerife as a training hub at those critical times of the year. You think that would be one of the times testing should be at its highest. I felt the authorities could have been doing more.” Several current teams have told
CW in recent months that tests on Teide remain infrequent. Similarly, an investigation by Spanish newspaper
Marca in February revealed how athletes cannot be tested between 11pm and 6am in Spain due to privacy laws (the UCI can apply for special permission). The report also revealed that, for samples that have to be analysed within 48 hours, weekend testing in Tenerife is ruled out because the nearest Wada-accredited lab is in Madrid. The newspaper quoted one source as saying: “From Thursday night to Sunday, they can do whatever they want because almost certainly no one will check them.”