BERLIN: Germany’s only Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich could yet lose his Olympic medals from the 2000 Sydney Games after confessing to doping with the help of Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.
The 39-year-old, who won the 1997 Tour de France, told yesterday’s edition of German weekly Focus that he “had access to treatment from Fuentes,” but insisted using no other substance than his own blood.
In April, a Spanish court jailed Fuentes for a year for performing blood transfusions on top cyclists.
Thomas Bach, president of the German Olympic Federation and a vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), told German daily Die Welt that Ullrich could still lose his road race gold and time-trial silver medals.
“We’ll check everything again carefully and meticulously,” said Bach.
Bach said Ullrich’s “so-called confession was nothing more than confirmation of facts that have already been held in Sports court rulings and in court cases.”
Ullrich was found guilty of a doping offence by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in February 2012 and was retroactively banned from August of that year with all results gained since May, 2005, erased.AFP
