Now for an update of our
previous post regarding the decision to strip Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador of his 2010 Tour de France title. Turns out the Spanish Tennis Federation doesn’t have much of a sense of humor as the organization has now filed suit against a French television station for running a sketch insinuating that Rafael Nadal uses performance-enhancing drugs.
A minute long sketch on “Les Guignols” (“The Puppets”) showed a man wearing a Nadal mask pulling into a gas station and filling up his vehicle with his own urine. A message at the end of the scene read, “Spanish athletes.
They do not win by chance.” That message was surrounded with pictures of the logos of various Spanish sports federations.
The television show aired the same day that news about Contador went public. “On this occasion intolerable limits have been exceeded and we at the RFET cannot ignore such discredit and slander towards our athletes,” federation president Jose Luis Escanuela told a British newspaper.
(Lee Davis is a Chattanooga attorney who can be reached at lee@davis-hoss.com or at 266-0605.)