The UCI have announced that Colombian cycling star Miguel Ángel López has received a four-year ban for doping.
In a long-running case, López, 30, has been found guilty of an anti-doping rule violation for “use and possession of a prohibited substance, Menotropin,” the UCI press release said, during the 2022 Giro d’Italia.
The statement added, “In accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code and the UCI Anti-Doping Rules, the period of suspension started on 25 July 2023 and will remain in force until 24 July 2027”.
López, who last raced with the Medellin-EPM squad until he was provisionally suspended midway through 2023, has repeatedly insisted on his innocence.
The UCI statement confirmed that the proceedings against López began as a result of evidence obtained by the Spanish Guardia Civil and the country’s anti-doping organisation, CELAD, during the course of an extensive police investigation into a drugs ring codenamed Operación Ilex that began in 2021. This evidence was in turn handled by the Independent Testing Agency (ITA).
Menotropin is a banned substance used in the treatment of fertility disturbances.
Operacion Ilex is still ongoing in the Spanish courts, centring on the alleged activities of a university professor, Dr Marcos Maynar and a doping ring that supplied both banned and legal substances to multiple athletes.
Maynar was arrested on May 11th, one day after López’s surprise withdrawal from the Giro d’Italia due to a leg injury and was initially charged with a crime against public health, drug trafficking and money laundering.
Dr Maynar has repeatedly insisted he is not guilty of any offences and has denied giving banned substances to Lopez.
López himself was briefly suspended by his last WorldTour team, Astana Qazaqstan, over the allegations before being definitively let go by the squad in December 2022. He was also once briefly questioned by Spanish police when flying in from Colombia.
Well-known for his fiery character, which saw him part ways with Movistar after he abandoned the 2021 Vuelta a Espana on the last stage in a dispute over team support, López talents as a climber helped bring him considerable success.
Having triumphed in the Tour de L’Avenir in 2014, the Colombian won the toughest stage of the 2020 Tour de France over the Col de Loze, at the Lagos de Covadonga in the 2021 Vuelta as well as taking outright victories in the Tour de Suisse and Volta a Catalunya.
In 2023, prior to his definitive suspension, he racked up no less than 28 wins, almost all in National or 1.2/2.2 races, and including eight out of nine stages in the Vuelta a Colombia. His biggest victory came in the now regrettably defunct Vuelta a San Juan, ranked 2.HC.
López can now appeal against the anti-doping sentence at CAS, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, for a period of up to one month.
Lopez himself already filed a case with the Court of Arbitration for Sport against Astana for wrongful dismissal and last month, there were unconfirmed reports that he had won the case and the Kazakh team would have to pay Lopez his back salary. Meanwhile, the cases arising from Ilex, in which Lopez is not facing any charges, are still yet to be heard in full in the Spanish courts.
