Still out there!” Harsh comments from current competitors raised over the doping violations of former J-League top bicycle racer Yuki Kitai.

Stripped of S-team for the first time in history

On February 20, JKA, a public interest incorporated foundation that oversees bicycle and auto racing, announced that it had found doping violations by top bicycle racer Yuki Kitai (35, Kanagawa). The JKA has issued a three-month suspension of his participation in races from March 1.

Kitai is the first rider in history to be stripped of the S-class S team,” said a sports newspaper reporter.

As a result of Kitai’s deprivation of the S-class classification, Yukiya Inubushi (29, Tokushima), an alternate and runner-up in the “KEIRIN Grand Prix 2024,” was additionally selected for the S-class S group as of April 1.

In ’18, a doping test for the track event of the All-Japan Professional Cycling Championships revealed that Shigenori Ito, 42, was found to have used a banned substance that has a muscle-enhancing effect. When the prohibited substances such as methandienone, which has muscle-enhancing effects, were detected in a doping test in the track event of the All-Japan Professional Cycling Championships in 2006, Ito was suspended from the competition for four years. Therefore, there are voices inside and outside the industry that say, ‘Isn’t the three-month suspension for Kitai too lenient? (A reporter for a sports newspaper).

There are cases of “inadvertent doping,” in which an athlete is caught in a test after taking cold medicine or other drugs just before a race, but the anabolic masculinizing steroid “methandienone” found in Kitai’s case was not a drug to be taken inadvertently.

Kitai, a former J-Leaguer, entered a bicycle racing school at the age of 30, and although he is an old rookie who debuted at the age of 31, he was promoted to the S-class within his first year of competition due to his high physical ability and the amount of practice that has made him the No. 1 cyclist in the world of bicycle racing. In June of last year, he won his first G1 race, which he had longed for. …… On the other hand, there were rumors of doping.

A few years ago, a player close to Kitai retired suddenly, and some suspected that he was caught in a doping test and was forced by the JKA to choose between announcing his decision or retiring, and chose to retire. After his retirement, Kitai grew at a fast pace, so there were rumors that “he may have been using as well. There was no official announcement by JKA.

Although there has been no official announcement by the JKA and it is only a rumor, current players have pointed out that doping is not limited to Kitai.