The Decathlon-AG2R team have confirmed the dismissal of Franck Bonnamour after it emerged he is under investigation for anomalies in his UCI biological passport blood data. However, the French rider has insisted he is innocent and is fighting his case.
Bonnamour joined the French team from B&B Hotels after the 2022 season and started the 2024 season in Australia at the Tour Down Under. However, the UCI announced his provisional suspension on February 5, citing ‘unexplained abnormalities in his Biological Passport’.
Decathlon-AG2R confirmed they had terminated Bonnamour's contract without giving any other details but insisted that the team “advocates the practice of cycling in accordance with stringent ethical rules.”
They added that Bonnamour's suspension “follows tests carried out before he joined the team on the 1st of January 2023.”
The UCI created the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) programme in 2008 as an indirect way to detect blood doping because traditional anti-doping tests for blood boosters like EPO were only effective in a short window of time.
Bonnamour is the first WorldTour rider to be caught up in a UCI ABP case for a decade. In 2022, seven riders from the W52-FC Porto team were suspended for various doping offences and João Rodrigues was given a four-year ban for ABP violations.
Legal battles and previous ABP cases have weakened the impact of the longitudinal testing but a number of sports now use ABP programmes with similar profiling carried out to detect the use of anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing hormones.
Bonnamour won the one-day La Polynormande race in 2022 and secured a number of other results in 2021 and 2022 but has denied doping.
“I have always done my job respecting the rules that the UCI imposes on me,” he wrote in a message on social media on Tuesday night, confirming his ABP case and that Decathlon-AG2R had ended his contract.
“I have always complied, of course, with the numerous anti-doping controls that this sport has required of me for years. I have never used prohibited products or any blood manipulation.
“With the help of my lawyers and scientists, we’re working on my defence. I have always been an honest, upright and clean rider and therefore cannot be accused of cheating.”
