Probe: Riis knew team was doping
Print Edition
FORMER manager Bjarne Riis chose to ignore drug-taking by riders on the former Team CSC, a report by Denmark’s anti-doping agency said yesterday.
Michael Ask, head of Anti-Doping Denmark, said Riis “failed to intervene”, and “it is totally unacceptable”.
“As team owner and leading sports director, Riis had a greater responsibility than the others as he, as the top manager, had authority to make the decisions about suspending dope users and reporting them to the anti-doping authorities,” Morten Molholm Hansen, head of Denmark’s Sports Confederation said. “He has silently accepted the use of doping.”
Senior Team CSC members Johnny Weltz and Alex Pedersen also were aware of the practices, Molholm Hansen added.
“Doping with cortisone was widespread and well organized in cycling until the late 1990s because it could not be detected,” he told a news conference in Copenhagen, adding it was briefly replaced by blood doping.
“We are sure it is still going on. Maybe not at the same scale but it takes place,” he added.
Molholm Hansen said Anti-Doping Denmark could have pressed charges against Riis, Weltz, and Pedersen, saying there was “enough to forward doping cases for anti-doping rule violations”. However, it cannot be done because the 10-year limit on doping cases meant they were out of date.
The 97-page report, published yesterday, was based on 50 interviews with present and former riders, aides, and officials involved in cycling since 1998, conducted by phone or email. All were voluntary, Ask said.
Riis revealed in 2007 that he used blood-boosting EPO to win the Tour de France in 1996. He later managed CSC, which eventually became Team Tinkoff-Saxo, until resigning three months ago.
The report said Riis gave the telephone number of Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes to Tyler Hamilton, telling the American, “Fuentes is the best in the business, with blood doping he is the doctor to go to.”
Danish rider Michael Rasmussen, who was sacked by his team while leading the 2007 Tour for lying about his whereabouts when he missed pre-race doping tests, admitted in 2013 he doped for more than a decade. Another Danish rider, Nicki Sorensen, who has become Tinkoff-Saxo’s sport director, admitted to doping, according to the report.
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