Winner of 1996 Tour de France Admits Doping
May 29th, 2007 • Posted in: NewsCOPENHAGEN
The winner of the 1996 Tour de France last week admitted that he used banned drugs, becoming the first champion of the event to confess to doping.
According to a report from the New York Times, Bjarne Riis said he used the blood-boosting drug EPO, steroids, and human growth hormone throughout the 1990s. It is unclear what prompted Riis, now the manager of a Danish cycling team, to make the confession.
The Chicago Tribune quotes Riis as saying, “The time has come to put the cards on the table…. I have done things I now regret and I wouldn’t do again. I have doped. I have taken EPO. For a while it was part of my life.”
While Riis told journalists that he did not deserve to keep his title and expected that it would be stripped from him, he added that he was “a rider at a time when those were the conditions,” meaning that use of performance-enhancing substances was widespread, reports the Agence France-Presse.
A report from the Associated Press notes that Riis’s confession comes at a time when 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis is desperately trying to keep his championship jersey as he awaits a ruling on his doping case. Landis tested positive for synthetic testosterone, but has maintained that he was the victim of a laboratory error.
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