Dane Bjarne Riis on Friday became the first rider to admit having used performance enhancing drugs while winning the Tour de France.
Riis, who won the race in 1996, said he used drugs between 1993 and 1998.
"I have taken banned substances, I have taken EPO. I bought it and took it myself," Riis said at a press conference where he read out a prepared statement, adding that team doctors bore no responsibility for his actions.
PHOTO: AP
"It is ultimately the cyclists themselves who must take responsibility," he said.
Riis, the 43-year-old current manager of Team CSC, said he took erythropoietin (EPO) from 1993 until 1998, including the 1996 season when he put an end to Miguel Indurain's five-year reign on the Tour de France.
Asked by a journalist if he was a worthy Tour de France winner, Riis replied: "No, I am not."
However, he added that he was "a rider at a time when those were the conditions."
EPO was said to be rife in the professional peloton during the 1990s, when there was still no test able to detect its use by riders.
EPO stimulates the production of red blood cells, increasing oxygen-carrying capacity and therefore improving endurance.
The Telekom team was a major force in 1996, and in 1997 when Jan Ullrich won the Tour de France.
Since the fall-out of a recent doping affair surrounding Ullrich, who is now retired, the team which is now known as T-Mobile has undergone a thorough clean-out of staff and riders connected with those "doping years."
Several of Riis's former Telekom teammates this week confessed to using banned substances, including one of the top cyclists of the past 15 years, Erik Zabel of Germany, as well as Rolf Aldag, Bert Dietz, Christian Henn and Udo Boelts.
Riis said he didn't want to speculate if any other riders from his period had used banned substances.
"No idea, it was possible," he said.
He added that his experience of using EPO left him believing that it did not work as a miracle tonic to riders with no talent.
"You can take as much as you want but if you don't have talent you can't win anything. I had some talent," he insisted.
"There's a tendency in cycling today to confess the mistakes of the past. I find that hard to understand. I have put my own past behind me," he added.
Riis, stone-faced and at times with tears swelling up in his eyes, said he had always regretted using performance-enhancing drugs.
"It's possible that I'm not a hero any more," he said. "I'm sorry if I've disappointed people. And for those for whom I was a hero, I'm sorry. They'll have to find new heroes now."
While admitting his guilt, Riis said he remained proud of his cycling achievements.
"I am proud of my results as a rider and an owner," he said.
The Dane said he decided to admit publicly to the doping for the sake of his current team, CSC.
"I'm doing this for my team, my team backs me 100 percent. Speaking out was necessary as there was so much speculation and I was using so much time and energy on the matter and my team needs me," he said.
Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), the sport's governing body, said Riis would not be stripped of his Tour de France title.
"The eight-year statute of limitations has expired," McQuaid told German sports news agency SID. "We're not going to rewrite the history now."
Nevertheless, the UCI called on Riis to give back the yellow jersey he was awarded as Tour winner in 1996.
"Despite the time limits for sanctions established by the World Anti-Doping Code having elapsed, the UCI urges the former rider to return his yellow jersey, the symbol of his victory," it said in a statement.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier