Police raid on the Bahrain hotel

The French gendarmerie carried out a search on Wednesday night at the hotel where the Bahrain team was staying in Pau, after the Pyrenean stage that ended in Saint-Lary-Soulan, a source close to the investigation reported on Thursday, confirming a piece of news from the Ciclingnews website. The record was carried out by the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Attacks on the Environment and Public Health (OCLAESP), this source told AFP.

The Bahrain cycling team confirmed the information shortly after through a statement, stating that those responsible were not informed of the reasons for the search: “The investigation led to searches in the rooms of the riders” and documentation was delivered to the gendarmes, he said. the notice. The seven riders of the team that remain in the race started this Thursday in the 18th stage, the last of the Pyrenees, from Pau to Luz-Ardiden.

Despite having only one rider in the ‘top 10’ of the classification (the Spanish Pello Bilbao, tenth), the Bahrain team, in great form since May, is having a very outstanding performance in the Tour de France and occupies the first place in the general team classification. He has also won two stages: Slovenian champion Matej Mohoric won the seventh stage on July 2, ending at Le Creusot and his Belgian teammate Dylan Teuns won the next day on the day ending at Grand-Bornand.

The Italian champion, Sonny Colbrelli, is also surprising for his ability to overcome the mountain, despite having a sprinter profile, and was third on the alpine day ending in Tignes, ahead of many climbers. And the Dutchman Wout Poels is the leader of the mountain classification. Another rider from the team, the Ukrainian Mark Padun, had already surprised at the beginning of June by winning two mountain stages in the Dauphiné. The formation also shone at the Giro, where Italian Damiano Caruso finished second overall at the end of May.

Outside the Movement for Credible Cycling

Bahrain is one of the nine participating teams on the Tour that is not part of the Movement for Credible Cycling (MPCC), launched in 2007 on a volunteer basis. This movement, at the forefront of the fight against doping, requires its members to respect stricter rules than those currently in force.

Among the nine teams that are not part of this movement are some of the best performing teams on the Tour, such as the yellow jersey UAE Tadej Pogacar, Ineos, Jumbo and Deceuninck, as well as BikeExchange, Astana, Movistar and Trek.

“We are committed to the highest level of professionalism and compliance with all regulatory requirements and we always cooperate in a professional manner,” insisted Bahrain on Thursday. The team regretted that the registration affected “the recovery of cyclists and in the preparation of food (…) the well-being of our team is a key priority.”

The covid-19 pandemic has complicated the fight against doping and reduced the number of tests, but the International Cycling Union (UCI) assured in early June that out-of-competition tests “had returned to normal levels.”

The president of the MPCC Roger Legeay regretted that the suspicion of doping fell back on cycling, despite all the weapons used to combat it. “The controls are not enough to end the suspicion,” he told AFP on Thursday. “Suspicion is permanent when someone gets good results.”

The same yellow jersey of the Tour, the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, has already faced questions from journalists on several occasions during this Tour due to his great performance. “When someone doesn’t believe in me, I always try to prove them wrong,” he insisted on Monday.

Bahrain, a team created in 2017 and part of the World Tour (first division), has as its head the Slovenian Milan Erzen, whose name was cited in the Aderlass blood doping case, for which two of his compatriots in the formation , a sports director (Borut Bozic) and a cyclist (Kristijan Koren) were suspended by the UCI.