Italy's anti-doping prosecutor is convinced that all cyclists are doping, a belief reinforced by four years of work as one of the world leaders in the battle against drugs in sports.

"I'm not the only one saying it. Lately, all of the cyclists I've interrogated have said that everyone dopes," the 78-year-old Ettore Torri told The Associated Press on Tuesday in his first interview in two years.

Torri has been at the forefront of the anti-doping fight since he took charge in 2006, prosecuting Giro d'Italia champions Ivan Basso and Danilo Di Luca and other Italian standouts such as Alessandro Petacchi and Riccardo Ricco on behalf of the Italian Olympic Committee, known as CONI.

"The longer I'm involved in this the more I marvel at how widespread doping is," Torri said. "And I don't think it will be eradicated. Because it just evolves continuously. There are new substances coming out that can't be tested for."

Torri said legalizing doping would be a possible solution if that didn't harm the health of cyclists, noting that anti-doping authorities prosecute only a small percentage of offenders.

"It's not fair when we single out one rider in a 100," he said. "If the other 99 have doped too but are not prosecuted, it's not fair."

As for the recent doping allegations against Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, Torri said CONI "was the first to attack the Spanish system, which was an invulnerable tower."

While Torri has no direct knowledge of the case against Contador, a couple of years ago he went after another Spaniard, Alejandro Valverde, for his involvement in the 2006 probe known as Operation Puerto.

Valverde was banned from races in Italy, a suspension that was extended worldwide earlier this year after years of litigation.

Contador was provisionally suspended by the International Cycling Federation (UCI) last week after a small amount of the banned drug clenbuterol was discovered in his system. Contador blamed contaminated beef for the result.

"He can blame it on a filet he ate but that's not enough," Torri said. "He needs to prove it."

Torri's nearly 50 years of service in Rome's public prosecutor's office has helped him maintain relations with the ordinary courts in his current job.

He's currently following court cases in Perugia, Padua, Como, Mantova, Sardinia and Rome. He said doping is even more widespread at the amateur level, noting how the winner of this summer's Maratona dei Dolomiti _ one of the country's biggest amateur races _ tested positive.

"As long as doping is a viable economic option it's always going to exist," he said. "It needs to be made so that it's no longer worth it economically."

Torri cited a blood and muscle enhancer called AICAR that a lab in Cologne recently developed a test for.

"Anti-doping is always behind the dopers. For example, anyone who used (AICAR) until yesterday got off," he said. "Every time we develop a test we've already lost 50 percent of those who have doped with a substance."

Even when a test is developed to find a certain substance, that doesn't eliminate the drug's use among dopers.

"There are always ways to use micro dosages that are not discovered in tests," Torri said. "These trainers are really good at their jobs and they're able to prescribe just enough of the drug that it remains under the banned levels."

The current rules created by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the UCI's new biological passport program need to be simplified, according to Torri.

"In some cases, rules complications favor the defendants," he said.

In one particularly doping-intensive day last week, Torri got word that about 50 suspicious pills were found in the home of Riccardo Ricco, who was already banned for doping at the 2008 Tour de France.

Ricco has come under suspicion again after the arrest last month of his former teammate at Ceramica Flaminia, Enrico Rossi.

Rossi is the brother of Ricco's partner, Vania Rossi, who has herself faced doping allegations after testing positive at the Italian cyclecross championships in January, although she got off when her backup sample came up clean.

Hours after learning of the pills found at Ricco's home, CONI's anti-doping court banned Basso's sister Elisa for four years for trafficking banned substances.

"It's called family doping," Torri said, shaking his head at the thought. "It's unbelievable."

If the pills found at Ricco's home are found to include banned substances, Ricco could face a life ban since it would be his second offense.

"But we'll see what explanation he provides," Torri said. "He could always show that they were for his grandmother. There's always a grandmother, a filet or something else."