Dopingheadlines in short!

Boonen ready to challenge Tour exclusion in court
The Tour de France doesn't want Tom Boonen, but the Quick Step rider is willing to go to court to force the race to accept him. The team, however, has said that it assumes Boonen would not start in the Tour. Boonen recently tested positive for cocaine in an out-of-competition control.

Olympic ski champion allegedly used blood doping
Prosecutors in Austria are investigating possible blood doping by 2002 Olympic cross-country ski champion Christian Hoffmann. Austrian Criminal Intelligence Service spokesman Gerald Tatzgern told the Austria Press Agency on Sunday that prosecutors have "reasonable suspicion" that the 34-year-old Hoffmann was involved in illegal blood enrichment. Hoffmann won gold in the 30-kilometer race at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

MORE than 7,500 drug tests were carried out on Britain's top sport stars in the past year, the latest figures have revealed. About 62 per cent of the 7,545 tests were conducted out of competition and there were 32 doping test failures in the year to March, UK Sport said.

EU, WADA to intensify talks on data protection
Officials from the EU and World Anti-Doping Agency promised Friday to intensify talks on privacy disputes, warning that continued disagreement could hurt global cooperation in catching drug cheats.
"We're never going to have full peace. There will always be something that will be discussed. But we don't have a conflict ... whereas two weeks ago I would say that we had conflict," WADA director general David Howman said in an interview

The Clean Sport Initiative is providing a forum to discuss accidental doping in sport at the Nepean Sportsplex in Ottawa, May 26, 2009. As Liliana Begg of the Clean Sport Initiative says, “Honest, hard-working athletes who would never knowingly take a banned substance have ended up testing positive because they took a nutritional supplement that was accidentally contaminated. The fear of this happening to them stalks all athletes who have devoted their lives to their sport and their dreams of becoming world champions.”