Doping Suspensions: Why Strict Penalties Matter

Cycling’s most unforgiving anti-doping rule is back in the spotlight, with two recent team-wide doping suspensions a stark reminder that the sport still can’t let its guard down.

Just this month, two Continental squads were suspended under the UCI rule that calls for entire teams to be sidelined when two or more riders trigger anti-doping violations within a 12-month window.

Colombia’s Medellín-EPM was handed a 30-day stop for two cases. Portugal’s Feirense Beeceler will sit out 22 days after three riders were cited for irregularities in their biological passports, including American journeyman Barry Miller.

The rule is explicit, and teams are now being held accountable for the actions of their riders.

The fallout can sometimes appear wildly unfair.

In both cases, all five riders cited were no longer on the suspended teams at the start of this season.

Yet when the UCI pulls a team out of competition, it doesn’t just punish the riders linked to the case. It sidelines every rider, staff member, and sponsor associated with that jersey.

But those rules exist because of not what happened this season or even three years ago, but of what happened decades ago.

A rule inspired by a different era

The “two-strikes-and-you’re-out” rule has been around for more than a decade.

It dates to the 2015 overhaul of the UCI anti-doping policies, which introduced team suspensions of 15 to 45 days when two riders or staffers commit anti-doping violations within a 12-month period.

The idea was born from the darkest days of the EPO era and the reckoning that came from the USADA case in 2012 involving the U.S. Postal Service team and several top pros, including Lance Armstrong.

The aim was to shift accountability away from individual riders and impose consequences on teams.

A string of devastating scandals, from the Festina Affair to Operación Puerto to the USADA case, laid bare the depth and complexity of team-orchestrated cheating.

Teams would sometimes coerce team members to cheat, then wash their hands of them when a rider was caught up in disciplinary cases. Yet the managers, doctors, and others involved in the conspiracy faced no real tangible penalties.

The UCI’s answer — led by then-UCI president Brian Cookson — was to force teams to own up to what happens inside their structure.

If two are caught, the thinking goes, the problem likely runs deeper than one bad apple.

On paper, it made sense for the times. But like just about anything in professional cycling, the fallout is often messy.

The problem with timing

The latest cases expose the rule’s biggest inconsistency: timing.

The riders who triggered the recent suspensions were no longer on those teams, and, in some cases, they hadn’t been for years.

Miller’s biological passport case traces back to samples from 2023, when he raced one season with Portugal’s Feirense Beeceler team. He hasn’t raced since 2024. Yet in 2026, his data helped trigger a suspension for a team that no longer employs him.

Also read: American Cyclist Named in Doping Case That Suspends Another Team

Fair or not, that’s how the biological passport system works.

Anti-doping authorities analyze blood values and other biomarkers during years and can build cases long after the alleged violation occurred. By the time a rider is notified, they might have changed teams, left the sport, or disappeared from the peloton entirely.

The result is that teams can be punished for riders who are no longer even part of their roster.

The blockbuster biological passport case in 2025 involving Oier Lazkano also reveals the complexity of imposing sanctions.

The WorldTour pro raced for Movistar during the period in question, but was on Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe when he was sanctioned. That means the Spanish team could technically be exposed under the two-strikes rule, but Red Bull got all the bad publicity despite releasing him immediately.

It’s not to say riders involved in any of these cases are angels. In fact, two of the five riders cited in the latest wave of team suspensions have also been individually sanctioned, and other cases are still playing out.

Deterrence works — cycling is still figuring out who should pay the price.

A rare sanction

The two-strikes rule might be on the books for more than 10 years, but its application remains uncommon.

No modern WorldTour super team has been suspended, even though a few have come close.

Suspensions have hit ProTeam or Continental squads, not the biggest teams (yet).

Though the suspensions are relatively short, they can take a team out of important races.

The rule’s first major test came in 2017, when Nicola Ruffoni and Stefano Pirazzi tested positive for GHRP-2, forcing Bardiani-CSF to withdraw from the Giro d’Italia and serve a month-long suspension.

That was a milestone case showing the rule could sideline an entire team.

Also read: Entire Cycling Team Suspended in Latest Biological Passport Doping Case

In 2021, Vini Zabù also withdrew from the Giro and served a 30-day suspension after positives from Matteo Spreafico and Andrea Piccolo.

Another Portuguese team — AP Hotels & Resorts-Tavira-SC Farense — was hit with a 20-day suspension following two biological passport cases in 2024.

It’s notable that the biological passport is back as a tool for sanctions in the most recent cases. After its rollout nearly 20 years ago, it faced legal pushback and costly litigation.

The International Testing Agency, starting in 2026, is now running anti-doping and disciplinary actions for the UCI, perhaps signaling a more aggressive use of the passport data.

Staying on top of the ball

There’s another wrinkle on the value of the two-strikes rule, at least if you believe cycling is now a more transparent and credible sport than it was a generation ago.

This isn’t the 1990s, when shady team doctors and caretakers ran programs in dank hotel rooms and in the back of team buses.

Today, it’s the trainers and coaches who bring the magic. Data and power numbers drive performance, not hematocrit levels and TUEs.

There’s a case to be made that advances in technology, aerodynamics, nutrition, and training have pushed cycling toward Formula 1-level science-driven improvements in power, speed, and recovery.

Also read: Understanding the Biological Passport: The Most Powerful Anti-Doping Tool of Professional Sport

Many of today’s sponsors are global corporations with zero tolerance. Contracts routinely include anti-doping escape clauses, allowing backers to walk away at the first hint of systemic cheating.

Teams beg riders not to cheat, and some even run independent controls to parallel UCI and WADA programs.

The MPCC, an advocacy group involving dozens of teams, operates under an even stricter ethical code.

Teams aren’t protecting dopers. They’re trying to avoid them, even if sources told Velo that teams are not back-checking biological passport data as rigorously as before.

That’s not to say some cyclists and teams aren’t still tempted to cut corners.

If anything, it’s often at the lower levels where some of the worst old-school doping may still be happening.

Deterrence

The UCI would argue the two-strikes rule still works even if it’s imperfect.

For the first time, it forces teams to take anti-doping seriously because the organization also pays the price.

The sport hasn’t had a major blowout doping scandal in years, though some are walking on eggshells, wary of another major star testing positive.

Some argue that cycling’s relatively scandal-free run is in large part due to the anti-doping infrastructure and rules like team-wide suspensions.

The current anti-doping system can still feel like a maze, with whereabouts tracking, the biological passport, and out-of-competition controls on top of what riders face during a race.

But it’s massively better than it was.

Yet the recent team suspensions raise questions about how the rule may no longer match modern anti-doping procedures.

When biological passport violations are detected years later and tied to riders no longer on the team, the link between team responsibility and accountability might seem a bit of a stretch.

The two-strikes rule also punishes everyone else on the team who might have had nothing to do with it and could be clean.

Collective punishment cuts both ways.

There’s no magic pill — excuse the pun — to perfectly fix cycling’s most existential problem.

Cycling has spent decades trying to prove it has moved beyond its past.

Rules like this are designed to keep the genie in the bottle.