Confessions of a doper: Jaksche again, with feeling

Nothing new here, move along please. Someone has dug up some dirt or simply created speculation out of thin air regarding a confession made almost 2 years ago. Some of it we knew already, some is more detailed and this bit would be damning, if proven true: Jaksche rode for Riis and Team CSC in 2004. During this time, according to Bild, Riis decided who should take how much of what product, with Jaksche saying how he was helped to avoid a positive doping control. Team Saxo Bank did not have a comment on the story.

No-one is saying anything at this stage and it is, as I said, a thin air story published by the German tabloid Bild am Sonntag. Did I say tabloid? It has plenty of juicy detail but little or no credence at this stage.

How to get hooked on drugs

It's easy. Struggle a bit in your races, maybe no more than any other neo-pro, but have a kindly dealer handy to tempt you to 'try this'. When you take the pills and they seem to work, well, it's a done deal. I mean if they didn't work you'd stay clean, yes? But they do work and you go faster. Jorg confirms this theory: Jörg Jaksche was 19 years old and not performing at all well in his first pro year, when he got a suggestion as to how to save his career. "The team manager came into my room and said: Listen; in cycling you take drugs like this, and either you accept or you leave the sport," Jaksche told the anti-doping conference "Play the Game" in Iceland.

Of course you could say it was weakness that sucked him in. There are times when you have to choose between good and bad, and it's your decision and your personal responsibility. Bjarne Riis appears to believe in that: "Furthermore, that this is supposed to have been a threat is definitely insulting and tells me that Jaksche either has a very bad sense of memory or deliberately chooses to twist the truth. It is correct that I told him about how difficult it would be to come back, and I was speaking from experience here, since I had been through the same only a short time before. That Jaksche still blames all sorts of other people for the mistakes he made himself is just so trivial. It is necessary that the problems in cycling are taken care of, and that's what I stand for."

Jaksche speaks, Ullrich denies

Just for contrast we have 2 sides of the doping story on Cyclingnews.com. We have Jaksche confessing and commenting on others, like this: Looking at various Tour de France performances, Jaksche said that he could not comment on Alberto Contador and Michael Rasmussen because he "was not at the Tour and therefore can't judge them. But one thing is sure, there are still doping methods which cannot be proved." He did comment on Linus Gerdemann, however, noting that Gerdemann rode well one day and not the next, and said that "Gerdemann rides like one who is clean."

And we have Ullrich in denial whilst we read about his as yet unexplained bank account transactions to Fuentes: Prosecutors in Bonn, Germany, continue to make their way through Jan Ullrich's Bank records. They have now come up with "suspicious cash withdrawals", the dates of which correspond to notes in Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes' records, Focus magazine has reported. The magazine also reports that there is evidence that Ullrich and his mentor Rudy Pevenage flew repeatedly to Madrid..

Guilty as Charged: Jaksche

You spin the wheel and take your chances in life.

From CyclingNews:Jörg Jaksche was handed a one year suspension by the Austrian cycling federation on Wednesday, having been found guilty of taking EPO and growth hormones, as well as having used blood doping. The suspension was backdated to run from July 2, 2007, the day Jaksche made his public confession to German magazine Speigel. Such violations usually carry a two year ban, but the federation applied the 'state's witness' regulation, which reduces the sentence when the suspect cooperates.

Old doper rates the current state "somewhat cleaner"

Jorg Jaksche sounds like a nice guy, so did he have to dope in the first place? From CN: Despite of the spate of recent positive doping tests, Jaksche thinks the sport is getting clean. "It is somewhat cleaner than it was three years ago and significantly cleaner than it was 10 years ago. They are on the right way, but it is a long road. Nobody can expect cycling to change overnight after 35 years of problems."