July 2, 2007 — Doping allegations continue to rock the world of cycling and in particular the Danish-based CSC team. The dust has barely settled since team owner and manager, Bjarne Riis admitted on May 25, 2007 to having doped when he won the 1996 Tour de France with the Telekom team. Riis claims that he bought and injected EPO himself, but that former Telekom team coach Walter Godefroot turned a blind eye to such doping by team members.

In yesterday’s confessions by Joerg Jaksche (Tinkoff), Riis now stands accused of being aware of doping by members of CSC. Jaksche raced with CSC in 2004 and claims to have doped for most of his eleven years in professional cycling.

Today, CSC conspicuously remains one of three ProTour teams with no members having signed the UCI anti-doping pledge, together with Quick Step-Innergetic (BEL) and Rabobank (NED) as indicated by the UCI website — click here.

But published reports in the Australian media indicate that Stuart O’Grady (CSC) has just signed the pledge despite disagreeing with parts of it. Other team members are less inclined to sign, such as CSC’s Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara who was quoted as saying he is “100% against (the pledge).” Stronger words still came from Dutch cyclist, Karsten Kroon, claiming that by signing the pledge, he will be bankrupting himself.

There were reports that CSC may launch legal action against Jaksche who apparently received at least € 100,000 ($ 143,779 CDN) from Der Spiegel for his confession.

CSC team doctors issued a statement refuting Jaksche’s allegations. Drs: Joost De Maeseneer; Piet De Moor; and Piet Danneels claim to have followed the UCI rules and not to have used substances from the “prohibited list.” The doctors also claim to completely support the ProTour Anti-Doping Programme “100% against doping,” as reported on Norwegian site, Sykkelekspressen.

Meanwhile, Walter Godefroot, who is now team manager with Astana, was also among those named by Jaksche. Breaking news reports suggest that the team has just dismissed him according to Cyclingpost, citing a story in Der Tagesspiegel, a daily based in Berlin, Germany.