By DPA,
Hamburg : German cyclist Andreas Kloeden has named in a possible doping scandal during the 2006 Tour de France event.
Focus magazine suggested on its website Friday that Kloeden’s name was mentioned by Patrik Sinkewitz and his girlfriend when they were questioned by prosecutors around doping practices of T-Mobile team doctors from a Freiburg clinic.
Sinkewitz has admitted that he went from the Tour, which stopped in Strasbourg for a day, to nearby Freiburg for blood doping with the help of the doctors, during the 2006 race.
Kloeden, like Sinkewitz at the T-Mobile team at the time, was allegedly part of what has been dubbed the “Rhine Convoy” of T-Mobile riders from Strasbourg to Freiburg.
Kloeden has dismissed all doping accusations and never submitted a positive test. Several other T-Mobile riders, including Sinkewitz, have failed tests and others such as 1996 Tour champ Bjarne Riis admitted to substance abuse in the 1990s when the team was called Telekom.
Kloeden came second for T-Mobile at the 2004 and 2006 Tour de France races.
He joined Astana in 2007. The team was not invited to the 2008 Tour over its doping-tainted past. It now boasts the record seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong of the US and 2007 Tour winner Alberto Contador of Spain.