November 6, 2007 — The recent doping revelations by former team member Patrik Sinkewitz will not jeopardize Deutsche Telekom’s sponsorship of T-Mobile claimed team boss Bob Stapleton today according to AFP.

Sinkewitz, who tested positive for artificial testosterone during the 2007 TdF, was subsequently sacked from the team. The German rider appeared before the German Cycling Federation (BDR) two weeks ago, giving five hours of evidence. Sinkewitz hopes that by cooperating with authorities, they will be lenient on him when it comes time to deciding if he merits a two-year suspension from professional cycling. He has given testimony about team doping at T-Mobile and implicated two team doctors whom he said provided EPO (erythropoietin) until 2006. That was the year when former T-Mobile rider and 1997 TdF winner Jan Ullrich was excluded from the TdF because of his links to the Puerto doping scandal.

Deutsche Telekom provides about 10 million euros ($13.4 million CDN) yearly to the team which it has sponsored since 1990. The telecommunications giant said earlier this year that it was reviewing its sponsorship of the team. Ukrainian Serguei Gonchar was sacked from the team in June after showing an abnormal blood test.

On May 25, Christian Frommert, director of sponsoring communication at Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile’s parent company) reiterated the company’s continued commitment to its sponsoring programme.

“Telekom has been an active sponsor of cycling for 16 years and has always strived to take responsibility for the sport. At present, the sponsoring of cycling is not image-enhancing, and we were faced with two possibilities; either to pull the plug on our sponsoring or fulfill our existing agreement with the team which runs through 2010.

“We have decided on the latter course. We want to give Bob Stapleton and his young team the chance to continue on their clean, fresh and transparent course – and we want to live up to our commitment and responsibility to shape change in cycling. That is what we set out to do when we re-launched the team last September (2006).”

Read the full
AFP story here.

Read the T-Mobile comments in full here.