Erik Zabel: German sprint cyclist doping for 'many years' more sad times

Evening all,

Yet more sad but non the less unsurprising news, Erik Zabel is being reported to have admitted doping. According to the bbc.

Former sprint cyclist Erik Zabel has admitted to "many years" of doping, according to a German newspaper.

German Zabel, now 43, won 12 stages of the Tour de France and eight stages of the Vuelta a Espana during his career.

But he has now said he used banned drugs and illegal methods between 1996 and 2003 before he retired in 2008.

"It was doping for many years. I never had a structured doping plan, never had any experts around me," he is quoted as saying in Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Erik Zabel Erik Zabel won 12 stages of the Tour de France

"I never saw myself as a super doper."

But Zabel, who was recently named in a French Senate inquiry as a drugs offender, says he has had the blood booster EPO as well as taking cortisone, a steroid hormone.

"When you take everything together - EPO, cortisone and even blood doping, then it's quite a lot," added Zabel.

"As a young rider I did not really think about how big a step this was. But it is clear that I knew very well, this is not allowed and no one forced me to take EPO. It was my decision.

"I wanted to keep my life, my dream life as a professional. I loved that, this sport, the trips. This selfishness was just stronger."

The International Cycling Union said Zabel had resigned from the Professional Cycling Council.

He contacted the UCI President on Monday to offer his resignation and to further express his "deep regret for having lied for so long about taking performance enhancing substances".

Zabel's apparent admission comes only a week after the end of the 2013 Tour de France and less than a year after Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour De France titles.

Armstrong, who came first in the Tour every year from 1999 to 2005, received a life ban from the United States Anti-Doping Agency for what they called "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen".

After years of denials, Armstrong admitted his guilt in a television interview with chat-show host Oprah Winfrey in January.

Source: BBC Sport

I know you come to expect it from that era but it's sad to have it confirmed from another hero of the time. Stuart O'Grady came out with similar comments last week. Doesn't bode well for the likes of Jens Joigt and Robbie McEwen.

Nobody is surprised. Seems like Hamilton's book along with the retroactive testing has done some good cleansing at least, with more and more confessions. Whilst there were probably some people riding clean in the late 90s/early 00s (Moncoutié? Mind you O'Grady always struck me as possible clean, so...) it's clear they were very much in the minority.

I can easily see how when your livelihood and passion seemingly rides (sorry!) on it, you would take the plunge, particularly in the kind of environment where it is deemed the norm amongst the top riders at least, and you have pressure from your peers and DS to contend with. Hamilton describes it very well in his book - his choice was basically to dope or find another career. Obviously that doesn't make it right, but we shouldn't be too quick to judge.

Just finished reading hamiltons book last week. The scary thing is that he never questions doing it. Once he made the decision all the lying amd deceiving seemed to come naturally. There was no remorse til he got caught.

It'd be more shocking to find someone who wasn't doping in those days.

But fortunately cycling is a much cleaner sport for it now

Zabel's eventual admission hardly raised an eye-brow. He had already admitted to using EPO once (in 1996) along with most of his Deutsche Telekom teammates of the time. Looks strongly as though it was a team-wide doping system that was being operated then.

The only real question is whether in a clean peloton, Zabel would have been a great racer - my suspicion is that he was almost entirely a product of systematic doping, going right back to his (and Ullrich and Kloden's) initial development within the East German state system.

It was well-known for years that the former Communist bloc-probably headed by East Germany-were rotten to the core (look at the Olympics); so no real surprises here, as others have said.

I, too, have just read "The Secret Race". I can't wait for the movie! Who could play Lance? Has anything really changed during the 110 years of the Tour? Maybe they should try teams sponsored by the major pharmaceutical multinationals.

As one who was always prepared to give Lance the benefit of the doubt, I remain shocked and saddened by the whole affair, and the supine ineffectiveness of the UCI.

When I had my annual medical late last year (condition of entering the Etape) my doctor laughed when we briefly discussed the Armstrong affair and said: "They've got something else they're developing to replace EPO/blood doping...".

Azabache

I read a great quote a few days ago reputedly from a former East German swimming coach, on being asked why they were having so much more success with female swimmers than with their male contemporaries. He replied 'We can turn the women into men, but we can't turn men into fish'.