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DOPING

World champ Valverde eyes maiden Tour of Lombardy triumph

Newly-crowned world champion Alejandro Valverde headlines the season-finale Tour of Lombardy on Saturday looking for his first win in a race where he has twice finished runner-up.

World champ Valverde eyes maiden Tour of Lombardy triumph
Alejandro Valverde celebrates after winning the Men's Elite road race of the 2018 UCI Road World Championships in Innsbruck, Austria on September 30, 2018. Photo: Christof Stache/AFP

The fifth and final Monument of the season – the 'Race of the Falling Leaves' – will be fought over 241km through the Alps-region between Bergamo and Como in northern Italy.

Movistar rider Valverde will be challenged by the same rivals who were beaten for the world championships road race crown in Innsbruck last month, including France's Romain Bardet who finished second and third-placed Canadian Michael Woods.

“Being world champion is important for whoever it might be,” said Valverde.

“It's also a race that I like a lot and which I've always nearly won.” 

Valverde finished second in the Tour of Lombardy in 2013 and 2014.

The 38-year-old warmed up by finishing third in the Milan-Turin semi-classic on Wednesday, which was won by French rider Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ), who will be among the favourites this weekend.

Valverde, who was banned for two years following Spanish doping probe Operacion Puerto, this week defended his record since returning in 2012.

“That's water under the bridge, and I don't even want to talk about it. I believe I've sufficiently demonstrated who I am since then.”

READ ALSO: Cyclists gear up for Tour of Lombardy race 

Italian Vincenzo Nibali will be defending his title, over a route that is virtually identical to last year's apart from a final three kilometre drop to the finish line at Como.

Nibali, of the Bahrain-Merida team, also won the race in 2015, and is one of two former winners competing along with 2014 champion Daniel Martin of Ireland.

The 33-year-old Nibali, who has won all the Grand Tours including the Tour de France in 2014, but has struggled for form this season.

Race favourites include French duo Pinto, and Romain Barden, Italian Gianni Moscon and Colombians Rigoberto Uran and Miguel Angleo Lopez.

“With the form I'm now showing I'm getting more and more convinced of continuing the positive streak until Saturday in Lombardy,” said Pinot after winning the Milan-Turin.

British Sky riders Chris Froome, winner of the Giro d'Italia, and Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, will not be competing.

The Mitchelton-Scott team are led by 2018 Vuelta champion Simon Yates and his twin brother Adam.

The route features iconic climbs up Madonna del Ghisallo and Muro di Sormano, with the final hill, a 1.7km ascent to Monte Olimpino with a five percent gradient.

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SPORT

Nurse weeps as tells German court of her blood doping role

A nurse, one of the co-defendants in the trial of a German sports doctor accused of masterminding an international blood-doping network, described on Friday how she helped athletes dope with illicit blood transfusions.

Nurse weeps as tells German court of her blood doping role
Mark Schmidt talks to his lawyer in court. Photo: Peter Kneffel/AFP
Sports physician Mark Schmidt, 42, and four co-defendants who allegedly aided him, stand trial in Munich accused of helping at least two dozen athletes undergo blood transfusions to boost performance.
   
So far, 23 athletes — mainly skiers and cyclists — from eight countries are known to be involved.
   
If found guilty, Schmidt and his co-defendants face jail for up to 10 years under anti-doping legislation introduced in Germany in 2015.
   
One of the accused, named only as Diana S., told the court how she first helped Schmidt in December 2017 when she travelled to Dobbiaco, Italy, to administer a blood transfusion before a skiing competition.
   
Blood doping is aimed at boosting the number of red blood cells, which allows the body to transport more oxygen to muscles, thereby increasing stamina and performance.
   
 
“It was about transportation, blood and athletes, but at first I didn't know what was behind it,” she is quoted as saying by the German media.   
 
“The treatments were always such that before the race the blood was taken in and after the races, the blood came out.”
   
She claimed to have been given precise instructions “via WhatsApp or by phone calls” where to go, which car to take, who to treat and how much blood to take or inject.
   
The trained nurse, who often sobbed while speaking, was told to dispose the bags of used blood on her way home after the “treatments”.
 
The single mother of three said she was motivated to earn extra money, having been told she would earn 200 euros ($237) per day.
   
At one point, she claims she told Schmidt that she wanted to stop.
   
“I told him that I was too agitated and too scared” to keep doing the clandestine work, because a sense of “panic travelled with me”, but Schmidt convinced her to stay involved. “It is also true that I simply had a shortage of money.”
   
Schmidt is alleged to have helped skiers who competed at both the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics and cyclists who raced at the 2016 Rio summer Olympics, as well as the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana.
   
He was arrested in Germany as part of Operation “Aderlass” — or “blood letting” in German — which involved raids at the Nordic world skiing championships in Seefeld, Austria in February 2019.
   
A verdict in the trial is expected by late December.
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