Six years after testing optimistic for EPO, former French bicycle owner Marion Sicot has been given a 10-month suspended jail sentence in court docket for the import and possession of doping merchandise.
Sicot admitted to doping a number of instances between 2016-2019 when her trial started in November final yr in Montargis, together with her sentencing in court docket coming after she was already banned from the game for 4 years.
The 32-year-old additionally obtained a €5000 wonderful on the conclusion of an extended anti-doping course of on Wednesday however won’t should go to jail except she commits one other crime through the 10-month interval of her suspended sentence.
She initially denied using erythropoietin (EPO) after testing optimistic for the banned substance on the French nationwide championships in 2019 however landed a two-year ban by the Agence Française de Lutte Contre le Dopage (AFLD) after admitting to its use in 2020.
This was then prolonged to a four-year retroactive ban from the Conseil d’État which lasted till March 2024.
Sicot additionally admitted to utilizing clenbuterol when she was a professional, most notably driving for the Belgian staff Doltcini-Van Eyck Sport in 2019.
“I wasn’t doing effectively, I lacked plenty of self-confidence…To carry out on the stage I wished to, I took the straightforward means out,” admitted Sicot of why she doped at the beginning of the trial in November.
“It’s very simple to dope, both you understand somebody, otherwise you go on the Internet.”
A good friend of Sicot’s equally obtained a 10-month suspended sentence on the trial for importing, administering and possessing doping merchandise. A former semi-pro bicycle owner, he was additionally fined €10,000.
The third individual convicted within the court docket south of Paris was a 51-year-old physician suspected of writing prescriptions illegally. He was fined a considerably bigger €20,000, alongside receiving a 10-month suspended sentence and a six-month ban from practising drugs.
Sicot was not given her suspended sentence for using doping substances as it’s not a punishable legal offence by legislation, as it’s in Germany, however for “trafficking in and possession of such substances.”
Her case and Anti-doping violations in France are managed by the Agence Française de Lutte Contre le Dopage (AFLD), an impartial physique created in 2006 “charged with guaranteeing that members in sports activities don’t violate guidelines concerning doping.”
