BRITISH cycling legend Chris Froome has just found out he won the Vuelta a España eight years ago, after the Spanish victor was disqualified for doping.
Cantabria rider Juanjo Cobo was declared positive, according to the International Cycling Union (UCI), but the verdict was open to appeal.
Cobo, who won the Vuelta in 2011, did not file an appeal before the deadline, meaning the case is now closed and Froome, who came second, has been declared the victor.
Bradley Wiggins, who came third, is now second in the 2011 Vuelta and Bauke Mollema moves up to third placce.
Director of the Vuelta a España, Javier Guillén, confirmed the organisation's 'absolute respect' for the UCI's decision and its 'zero tolerance against doping'.
Guillén also congratulated Froome on his Vuelta win, which is now his second – when the Brit won the Spanish tour in 2017, he thought it was for the first time.
Froome has also won the Tour de France four times, in 2013 and then three years on the trot from 2015 to 2017 inclusive, and won the Giro d'Italia last year.
Cobo was found to have been using a performance-enhancing substance in 2009 and 2011 which appears on the banned list and which was detected on his 'biological passport'.
As a result, he has been barred from the sport for three years.
The verdict has stripped the Spaniard of other victories, including his having won the La Granja stage in 2009 and the Angliru stage in 2011.
Winners of these stages, as a result of the positive doping, are Alejandro Valverde and Wout Poels.
The case has close links to that of Palencia-born weightlifter Lydia Valentín, who returned from her first Olympic games in Peking in 2008 with a fifth-place diploma and from London 2012 with a fourth, but who, in 2016, discovered she had netted the silver and gold respectively after the three women placed ahead of her were disqualified for doping.
