Joerg Jaksche has become the first rider to admit using blood doping prepared by a Spanish doctor in the Operation Puerto scandal.
Jaksche told Germany’s Spiegel magazine that he has used performance-enhancing drugs since 1997, while riding for a number of teams.
“I believe it’s important for the future of the sport that someone comes out and says, ‘OK, this is how it happens here,”‘ Jaksche told Spiegel. The magazine released the text of its article in advance to other news media Saturday.
Jaksche, a German who lives in Austria, was suspended by his team – Tinkoff Credit Systems – in May for suspected involvement in Operation Puerto.
The 30-year-old rider said he would make himself available as a witness to the World Anti-Doping Agency; the UCI, the governing body of international cycling; and to justice officials.
Jaksche’s confession comes after a recent spate of doping admissions from several former top riders for Telekom in the 1990s, including 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis.
During his career, Jaksche also rode for Polti, Team Telekom, Once, CSC and Liberty Seguros, and he told Spiegel that doping was either actively conducted by the team leadership or tolerated.
“Of course, no one held my arm for the injection, but team leaders, who got rich off you in the past, who supplied the things, they are now pretending to push for a clean sport,” Jaksche told Spiegel.
Eddy Mazzoleni has been provisionally suspended by the Astana cycling team.
Mazzoleni, who finished third in this year’s Giro d’Italia, is among a group of four riders that will be questioned next week by Italian prosecutors as part of a doping probe.
Astana said on its website that it would wait for the results of that investigation until making a final decision concerning the Italian.
