Marion Sicot Receives 10-Month Suspended Sentence and €5000 Fine Six Years After Controversial EPO Test

Six years after checking out certain for EPO, former French bike owner Marion Sicot has been given a 10-month suspended jail sentence in courtroom for the import and ownership of doping merchandise.

Sicot admitted to doping a number of occasions between 2016-2019 when her trial started in November ultimate yr in Montargis, along with her sentencing in courtroom coming after she used to be already banned from the game for 4 years. 

The 32-year-old additionally gained a €5000 fantastic on the conclusion of a protracted anti-doping procedure on Wednesday however won’t have to visit jail until she commits some other crime right through the 10-month duration of her suspended sentence.

She firstly denied using erythropoietin (EPO) after checking out certain for the banned substance on the French nationwide championships in 2019 however landed a two-year ban by way of the Agence Française de Lutte Contre le Dopage (AFLD) after admitting to its use in 2020. 

This used to be then prolonged to a four-year retroactive ban from the Conseil d’État which lasted till March 2024. 

Sicot additionally admitted to the use of clenbuterol when she used to be a professional, maximum particularly driving for the Belgian crew Doltcini-Van Eyck Recreation in 2019.

“I wasn’t doing well, I lacked a lot of self-confidence…To perform at the level I wanted to, I took the easy way out,” admitted Sicot of why she doped initially of the trial in November.

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“It’s very easy to dope, either you know someone, or you go on the Internet.”

A pal of Sicot’s in a similar way gained a 10-month suspended sentence on the trial for uploading, administering and possessing doping merchandise. A former semi-pro bike owner, he used to be additionally fined €10,000.

The 3rd individual convicted within the courtroom south of Paris used to be a 51-year-old physician suspected of writing prescriptions illegally. He used to be fined a considerably higher €20,000, along receiving a 10-month suspended sentence and a six-month ban from training drugs.

Sicot used to be no longer given her suspended sentence for using doping components as it’s not a punishable legal offence by way of regulation, as it’s in Germany, however for “trafficking in and possession of such substances.” 

Her case and Anti-doping violations in France are controlled by way of the Agence Française de Lutte Contre le Dopage (AFLD), an unbiased frame created in 2006 “charged with ensuring that participants in sports do not violate rules regarding doping.”