... reflecting on this further, has the friend who gave him the meat been identified, did he actually come across that day, did he have receipts from a butchers, etc - ie do we know for sure that the steak did exist?
Probably I've just missed all of this by not reading the right mags!
The friend was a Spanish journalist who was a regular visitor to the team. He's spoken with the team cook via mobile whilst on the way, and was asked to get some meat. The journalist was asked to get the meat because the hotel were being sticky about letting the team use the hotel kitchen, so they were cooking in the back of the team bus. This was all documented in an interview the cook gave to some other journalist a couple of days later. The interview said the journalist got it from Pau market, but the journalist said he got it just before crossing the border (do you know what French for "veal tenderlion" is?). Maybe the cook didn't ask at the time, and just assumed.
The team do have the receipt, which would have gone in for expenses.
The contaminated meat theory can't be proved either way.
By the time the test results were available the actual meat from the same cow would have been history, and anything else, such as the hide, would be untraceable.
On the other side, before clenbuterol was banned in cattle there were cases of people being hospitalised due to eating clenbuterol contaminated cow meat (i.e not liver). There were about 42,000(*) clenbuterol slaughterhouse tests in Europe over 2 years, and none tested positive. However, that just means none failed the public health standards, not that there were none that would have registered clenbuterol on a test designed to detect evidence of use. It seems to be known than stopping dosing 2 or 3 weeks before slaughter will result in passing the test. Clenbuterol use does continue - a Spanish vet was nabbed for selling clenbuterol to farmers (in the Canaries iirc) after Contador was tested.
If you want to trawl through the mammoth treads on the cyclingnews forum, you can find the links for most of this.
Me, I think the blood doping explanation is the most likely.
However, I also think that if this ever gets out of the sporting courts and into the civil ones, Contador could end up getting off on the uncertainty. It would take longer than a year though, not to mention costing a fortune. Contador would do well to compare his current financial status with that of Flandis.
(*)
Anyone any idea of what percentage of animals that makes?
