Giro runner-up Di Luca tests positive for CERA

LE GRAND BORNAND, France (Reuters) - Giro d'Italia runner-up Danilo Di Luca has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for the banned blood booster CERA, the International Cycling Union (UCI) said Wednesday.

The shock announcement is another hammer blow for Italian cycling after a raft of riders were involved in doping probes, including 2007 Giro winner Di Luca on two previous occasions.

"Earlier today, the UCI advised Italian rider Danilo Di Luca that he is provisionally suspended," the UCI said in a statement.

"The decision to provisionally suspend Mr Di Luca was made in response to a report from the WADA accredited laboratory in Paris indicating an Adverse Analytical Finding of Recombinant EPO (CERA) in blood samples collected from him at the Giro d'Italia on 20 May and 28 May 2009."

The 33-year-old faces a two-year suspension from the sport should his B sample returns positive.

"If the B sample is also confirmed positive, I will stop racing," Di Luca was quoted as saying on the Gazzetta dello Sport website (www.gazzetta.it).

The LPR rider, who is not racing in the Tour de France, won two stages in this year's Giro where he continually said he had nothing to do with doping.

Di Luca served a three-month ban in late 2007 after the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) found him guilty of frequenting a doctor accused of supplying doping products to athletes.

Last year CONI tried to ban him for two years for having abnormal hormone levels during the 2007 Giro but after much legal wrangling he was found not guilty because of insufficient evidence.

Italian officials had been delighted that May's Giro, celebrating its centenary year, appeared to have avoided the stain of doping for the first time in years but more soul-searching will now follow.

Giro chief Angelo Zomegnan said in a statement:

"Yet again the Giro d'Italia, which has always strived to be clean and in 2009 invested in the fight against doping like never before in the previous 100 years, has found itself the victim of a negative episode which obliges us as organizers to consider appropriate action to protect the event."

Di Luca had led this year's Giro riders in a protest about the safety of the stage through the streets of Milan and gained widespread respect from the peloton.

(writing by Mark Meadows in Rome)

(Editing by Ken Ferris; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)