After having a positive test for EPO from 2005 annulled, a Spanish court has decreed that multiple Vuelta winner Roberto Heras is to be paid €724,000 in compensation.

When news of the test emerged in 2005, Heras became the first rider in history to be stripped of a Grand Tour win, which he fought and eventually gained back a Vuelta title in 2012 after Spain’s Supreme Court confirmed a previous legal ruling from 2011 that there had been irregularities in the testing procedure, which annulled the two-year ban and penalty.

He has been awarded the money this time as he was fired from Liberty Seguros and was unable to continue his career as a result of the positive test.

Enriqe Bastida, the head of Spain’s anti-doping agency, AEPSAD, strongly expressed his dissatisfaction with the sentence to Spanish newspaper MARCA, describing it as “unthinkable, in this day and age. With all due respect to the courts, doping is not something for legal debate, it’s an ethical issue.”

Heras won the Vuelta in 2000, 2003, 2004 and 2005, a race record for the number of wins. He is now 41 and race non-professional mountain bike races.