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Former sprint cyclist Erik Zabel, who admitted to years of doping in an interview on Sunday, has resigned from the Professional Cycling Council (CCP), an advisory body to the UCI, the governing body said yesterday. |
The German said he was “no longer the right person” to be a part of the CCP after coming clean about his past in an interview in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. He admitted using banned drugs and illegal methods, including EPO, cortisone and blood doping, from 1996 until 2003.
The UCI said in a statement that Zabel contacted the body’s president yesterday to offer his resignation and to express his “deep regret for having lied for so long about taking performance-enhancing substances”.
Zabel, 42, was among the finest sprinters in his sport and topped the points classification of the Tour de France six times until his retirement in 2008. He was recently named in a French Senate inquiry as a drugs offender.
Zabel featured in the French report along with several other riders including the top two in the 1998 Tour de France—Italian Marco Pantani, who died of a drug overdose in 2004, and German Jan Ullrich.
Zabel, who in a 2007 interview had only admitted to brief use of EPO in 1996, now says “it was only a small part of the truth”.
“I doped much longer, for many years... I never had a structured doping plan, no experts around me and that’s why I didn’t see myself as a super doper. But if you put it all together now—EPO, cortisone and blood doping—then it is quite a lot.”
Zabel also resigned as sports director of Germany’s most important race, the Cyclassics in Hamburg. Zabel is also a coach at the Russian Katusha team, who are yet to comment on the issue.
German cycling supremo Rudolf Scharping said in a statement that Zabel’s confession was another “sad example” for the “infested decade” in the sport in which riders such as seven-times Tour winner Lance Armstrong and others also used banned substances.
Zabel said he was not ready for a full confession at the time because “I wanted to keep my life, my dream job as a pro cyclist. I loved it so much.”
A leading German pharmacologist, Fritz Soergel, said he doubted Zabel’s statement that he had no detailled doping plan.
“I find it hard to believe that this is the full truth. As a scientist I say that the doping must have taken place as part of a system. Zabel should name the men behind it,” Soergel said.