Contador’s butcher threatens to sue

THE year has not started well for Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador.

He has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France victory and banned for two years for doping.

And now, the Basque butcher who sold the steak that Contador blames for his high reading of clenbuterol, is considering legal action against the disgraced sportsman.

Javier Zabaleta said that his lawyers ‘are examining everything that has been said in the case’ and had not ruled out taking judicial action.

The butcher, from Irun, claimed in a press conference that he had had a miserable time for a year and a half, especially when a company of private detectives from Madrid subjected him to ‘particular control’.

It comes after the court rejected Contador’s arguments that the drug in his system – a fat-burning and muscle-building supplement which is sometimes used by farmers to fatten their livestock – had come from contaminated meat.

Lawyers for the Madrid cyclist argued the meat consumed on the 2010 Tour’s second rest day was from a cow imported from a European country where farmers are known to give clenbuterol to cattle to improve their market value.

However, Zabaleta always maintained that the meat he sold to the rider had been bred in the Basque Country.