After serving a two-year doping ban, German professional road racing cyclist Stefan Schumacher has admitted to regularly knocking down a cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs, likening it to eating pasta after training.
Schumacher was caught in October 2008 when a sample taken during that July’s Tour de France was shown to have contained CERA, a variant of the banned blood-booster erythropoeitin (EPO). He had also tested positive at the Beijing Olympics.
Drug-taking, he said, was par for the course in his then-team. Schumacher now races for the Danish team Christina Watches-Onfone.
“I took EPO, growth hormones and corticoids (steroids),” the former Gerolsteiner rider told Der Speigel in an interview that will be published in full on Sunday. “I was put into a system. I’m not proud of it but that’s the way it was. Doping became an integral part of the daily routine, like a plate of pasta after training.”
A number of other top cyclists, notably from the Dutch former Rabobank team, too have since admitted to regular doping during their careers.
Schumacher's statement comes in the wake of the confession by former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong that he cheated his way to the top.
A former cancer survivor, who went on to become the greatest cyclist the world has seen, Armstrong's fall from grace has been as swift and spectacular as his rise through the French alps.
Long dogged by accusations he cheated his way to the top, an October report from the US anti-doping body USADA ultimately triggered his rapid slide.
USADA exposed Armstrong as a liar and a cheat, describing him as the ringmaster of the "most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen," involving anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, blood transfusions and other doping.
Closer home, the name of Olympic medal winning boxer Vijender Singh cropped up in the wake of recovery of 26 kg of heroin worth an estimated Rs130 crore from an NRI's house in Mohali's district in which fellow pugilist Ram Singh was questioned.
While Ram Singh has admitted before the police that he and Vijender started taking consuming heroin in December 2012, the latter has maintained that he has never taken drugs in any form. Investigations in the matter are underway.
