Professional cycling sustained another blow to its credibility on Thursday when two German riders admitted in an emotional, nationally televised news conference that they took performance-enhancing drugs while supporting the winning riders during the Tour de France.
Erik Zabel and Rolf Aldag, who rode for Telekom when that team's lead riders won the tour in 1996 and 1997, said on Thursday that they had taken the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin, or EPO.
Zabel, 36, is the first professional German cyclist still actively competing to admit publicly that he used illegal substances. Zabel broke into tears as he admitted using EPO before the 1996 tour and during the first week of that race, which was won by the team leader Bjarne Riis.
"My generation will probably be remembered as Generation EPO," said Zabel, speaking at a news conference in Bonn held by T-Mobile, the successor to the Telekom team.
Aldag, 38, said he used EPO between 1995 and 1997, including during the 1997 tour, which was won by the Telekom team leader Jan Ullrich.
Aldag is the sporting director of the T-Mobile team. Zabel rides for Milram.
Riis and Ullrich have previously denied using illegal substances during their cycling careers.
Riis, a Dane who is the sports director of another cycling team, CSC, said that he planned to hold a news conference yesterday.
Ullrich was fired by T-Mobile last year after he and several other cyclists were implicated in a Spanish doping investigation and he and a teammate were suspended from last year's tour. Ullrich retired from cycling in February.
The latest admissions come at a time when professional cycling has been shaken by a series of scandals. The Spanish police have implicated more than 100 riders in their investigation of blood doping. Floyd Landis, the US rider who won last year's tour only to test positive for synthetic testosterone, is continuing to fight the charge that he used dope.
In Thursday's edition of Danish newspaper Politiken, former Telekom team member Brian Holm, a Dane, said he also had used EPO in the 1990s.
The latest wave of doping admissions began on Monday when Bert Dietz, another former Telekom cyclist, admitted on German national television that he had used EPO. He accused two team doctors, Andreas Schmid and Lothar Heinrich, of providing the substance.
On Wednesday, the doctors released statements confirming the accusation. Both were fired on Thursday by the University of Freiburg clinic that employed them.
Two other former Telekom riders also admitted this week that they had used EPO.
In his statement, Schmid said that he "made doping substances, especially EPO, available to certain riders since the mid-1990s."
He also said that those actions did not include any T-Mobile riders.
T-Mobile has recently instituted one of the strictest internal anti-doping programs in professional cycling.
No test for EPO existed until 2000. After that, some cyclists turned to the use of blood transfusions to avoid being caught. Now, under new international cycling rules implemented during the last year, the blood of the top 600 riders will be profiled to provide a baseline to aid in evaluating future test results. There will also be a dramatic increase in random, out-of-competition tests.
Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France, applauded Zabel and Aldag.
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