When the 83rd edition of the Volta a Portugal kicks off in Lisbon on Thursday afternoon, it will do so under a cloud of doping cases and police raids.
While the scandal-ridden years of WorldTour-level racing are – barring a Bahrain Victorious raid or two – apparently far in the rear-view mirror, a world away in the relatively isolated Portuguese racing scene, the Grandíssima gets underway with drugs and suspensions taking the headlines.
Just this week, riders from three of the top Portuguese teams were subject to police raids, with Luis Mendonça (Glassdrive-Q8-Anicolor), João Benta, Francisco Campos (Efapel), Daniel Freitas (Rádio Popular-Paredes-Boavista) all out of the race as a result.
The raids and suspension all came about as a result of ‘Operação Prova Limpa’ (Operation Clean Test), a long-running police investigation led by the Porto Public Prosecutors which has results in the UCI suspension of the country’s top team, W52-FC Porto.
Amid the raids and suspensions, António Júlio Nunes, director of the Portuguese Anti-Doping Authority (ADOP) has been living under police surveillance (opens in new tab) after receiving numerous threats – including a shotgun cartridge in the post.
The latest raids, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, targeted Glassdrive, Efapel, and Rádio Popular riders. Campos, who rode for W52 between 2019 and 2021, subsequently had his contract terminated (opens in new tab) by his team, despite protesting that nothing had been found in the raid. Freitas, who was at W52 from 2016 to 2018, has been placed under an internal suspension.
Mendonça and Benta, meanwhile, were late scratches from the Volta start list on Wednesday. Glassdrive stated that the former was withdrawn to “keep focus” on the race and “protect the image” of the team (opens in new tab), while Benta is out despite protesting in a social media post that he had a “clear conscience” and that nothing had been found at his home, either.
Despite the controversy, all three teams will take the start of the Volta with a full roster of seven riders, with Glassdrive led by a trio of overall favourites in Frederico Figueiredo, Mauricio Moreira, and Antonio Carvalho.
One team that will be conspicuously absent from the race, however, is W52-FC Porto, the squad which has dominated the Volta for the better part of a decade. They have won eight of the past nine editions of the race with Alejandro Marque, Gustavo Cesar Veloso (twice), Rui Vinhas, and Amaro Antunes (three…
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