and now it’s Zabel

At the moment it seems that doping confessions in cycling are a weekly occurance; today it’s Erik Zabel — six times winner of the Tour de France Green Jersey — and former Telekom team-mate Rolf Aldag admitting using banned blood booster EPO, but in Zabel’s case only for a week in the mid-1990s.

Their confessions follow those of ex-Telekom men Udo Boelts, Bert Dietz and Christian Henn earlier this week. Two former Telekom doctors, Andreas Schmid and Lothar Heinrich, have both recently been suspended by T-Mobile (the renamed Telekom) after they admitted administering banned substances when working for the team in the 1990s. (source: BBC)

update 26/05/2007: The International Cycling Union (UCI) states that: ‘The confessions from Germany and Denmark show that people are now ready to speak out. This is extremely positive.’ Ready to speak out, maybe — though we should ask how many of the fifty or so riders implicated in  ‘Operation Puerto’ haved fessed up. And those who have spoken out show no inclination to do the one thing they could do to help cycling  — walk away.