by MIKE KING

BARRY FORDE, the most renowned cyclist this country has produced, will serve a two-year suspension from the sport after failing a drug test last October.

Forde will not ride again until 2008 after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled against him and the Barbados Cycling Union (BCU) in the matter with the governing body for the sport, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).

This was pursuant to the hearing held at the CAS headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 24.

Dr Michael Lehner of Germany, attorney for the BCU and Forde, said the ban for unusually high testosterone levels, took effect from last December.

The 29-year-old Forde, the only Barbadian rider to have won a medal at the Commonwealth Games, tested positive for elevated level testosterone/epitestoterone ratio of 8.1, way above the normally accepted level of 4.0.

The drug tests could take the air out of Forde's Olympic tyres as he will only be able to resume riding less than a year before the Beijing Games.

During the two-year suspension, Forde will not be able to receive any funding from Government or any Olympic committee. He will also be debarred from competing in any other sport.

It's the second blow-out for Forde, who was stripped of double Pan American Games gold medals and a World Championship bronze medal in 2003 after a positive test for ephedrine. He was given a warning for those offences.

The suspensions came at a time when cycling has been hit hard by doping scandals, notably Tour de France winner Floyd Landis' positive test for elevated testosterone.

"We have been working on a daily basis to solve the problems," International Cycling Union president Pat McQuaid said. "That is now our main goal."

Italy's Ivan Basso and Germany's Jan Ullrich were among riders excluded at the start of the Tour de France after their names turned up on a list compiled by Spanish doping investigators.

History was created when Forde's case became the first one for Barbados to be reviewed by the CAS. The international court body became involved when the UCI and the BCU were at odds over the findings of the urine test conducted during his performance at the six-day event in Grenoble, France, last October 28.

Back in February, the UCI received a decision from the BCU stating that they would not be imposing any sanction on Forde.

BCU racing secretary Charlie Pile made it clear then that after a thorough investigation, no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing by Forde had been found, therefore the decision was made not to punish the rider.

"The investigation did not find any conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by the athlete. We (the BCU) acknowledged the elevated levels of testosterone, but there was also enough evidence to suggest that natural physiological reasons may have been responsible for the fluctuation," Pile said.

The UCI Anti-Doping Commission thought otherwise.

Forde, a former Foundation student, is the most decorated rider in the annals of local cycling. He was a sixth-place finisher in the match sprint at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, and last year won a silver medal in the keirin at the World Championships in Carson City, California.

Barbados has won just 11 Commonwealth Games medals and Forde has one of them, a bronze, earned at the 1998 event in Venezuela and is one of only seven Barbadians to have struck gold in the history of the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games – the others being the late athlete Patsy Callender, weightlifter William Maynard, track star Obadele Thompson, boxer Shawn Terry Cox and swimmers Nicky Neckles and Bradley Ally.