Doping Confessions

Pressure is mounting both on Team Telekom's successor T-Mobile and its former stars Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich, who won the Tour de France in 1996 and 1997 respectively, after statements by two teammates from that period.

Earlier this week, ex-Telekom-rider Bert Dietz said doctors had given him injections of EPO, a banned substance that increases the production of red blood cells, in 1995. In an interview on German public television, Dietz quoted the doctors as saying: "If we want to be riding at the front of the pack, we'll probably have to try out this new substance."

Dietz's former teammate Christian Henn also owned up to taking EPO. "The time was such," he told the daily Kölner Stadtanzeiger newspaper, "that otherwise we wouldn't reasonably have been able to compete. It was all or nothing."

The two ex-riders' statements support allegations recently made in a book by Telekom's former masseur, Jef D'Hont, that doping was rampant at Telekom during the team's glory years.

German cycling star Jan Ullrich, who was fired from T-Mobile last year after suspicions of being involved in a separate scheme to use enhanced blood, has refused to comment on any doping allegations.

But T-Mobile's former sporting director Walter Godefroot has denied the allegations, accusing Dietz of financial interest in making his confession.

Team's future in doubt

The University Hospital of Freiburg in southern Germany said it is temporarily suspending two doctors implicated in the admission, pending the results of an investigation by an independent committee.

The hospital, which is one of Germany's most renowned sports medicine facilities, also said it would end its association with T-Mobile.

Team T-Mobile's sponsor, Deutsche Telekom, will offer an official reaction to Dietz and Henn's statements at a press conference on Thursday, amidst speculations that it might discontinue its cycling activities.

"The question is whether we believe cycling can be cleaned up," Stephan Althoff, Telekom's head of sponsoring, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "If not, we'll have to take appropriate action," he said.

Admissions of doping from former members of one of cycling's premier teams is further bad news for the beleaguered sport -- 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis is still being investigated for abnormally high levels of testosterone and could well be stripped of his title.