Michael Rogers, of Australia. AP FILE PHOTO
AIGLE, Switzerland — Olympic bronze medalist and three-time world time trial champion Michael Rogers of Australia has tested positive for clenbuterol after racing in China.
The International Cycling Union said Wednesday that Rogers is provisionally suspended while his national federation investigates the case.
Rogers tested positive for clenbuterol, which helps build muscle and burn fat, at the Japan Cup on Oct. 20.
The previous week Rogers rode to an 11th-place finish at the five-day Tour of Beijing. Widespread use of clenbuterol in livestock farming in China and Mexico has made those countries a well-known risk for athletes as it is easier to ingest the substance there.
Rogers told his employer, Team Saxo-Tinkoff, that “he never ingested the substance knowingly nor deliberately and fears that the adverse analytical finding origins from a contaminated food source,” the team said in a statement.
Clenbuterol is the substance Alberto Contador tested positive for at the 2010 Tour de France.
Contador could not prove his claim at the Court of Arbitration for Sport that he ate contaminated beef. He was stripped of his victory and served a two-year ban.
Rogers joined Contador at Saxo-Tinkoff last season from Team Sky, where he rode in support of 2012 Tour winner
Bradley Wiggins.
Rogers left Sky after being named in evidence in the Lance Armstrong case as working with the American’s favored doctor Michele Ferrari around 2005.
In 2012, Rogers was upgraded to bronze in the time trial at the 2004 Athens Olympics when the IOC disqualified race winner Tyler Hamilton of the United States for doping.
Rogers won three straight world titles in the discipline from 2003 to ’05. The UCI awarded him the first title after British winner David Millar admitted doping.