Further investigations of Freiburg Clinic

T-Mobile Team riders may have continued to obtain EPO from the Freiburg University Clinic after 2002, and in 2006 riders are said to have traveled to the clinic for illegal blood transfusions, according to the German news magahine Focus.

The team and the Clinic broke off their working relations afer disclosures in spring 2007 that Doctors Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid had provided riders with illegal doping substantances over the years, up through 2002.

Freiburg Public Prosecutor Christoph Frank confirmed to the magazine that there was evidence that the Clinic provided EPO to the riders after 2002. His investigators were looking into deliveries made from apothecaries to Schmid and Heinrich.

The prosecutor also said that he was looking into claims that "a number of T-Mobile riders made numerous trips in 2006" to the Clinic, "in order to receive illegal blood transfusions." Former T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz has claimed that he went to the Clinic afer the sart of the Tour de France 2006 for a transfusion, and it is suspected that at least some of his teammates did the same.

Frank said that he is invetigating whether such transfusions could damage the health of the athletes, and, if so, then he could file charges of endangering their health. This could mean that former T-Mobile team management members including Walter Godefroot, Rudy Pevenage, Mario Kummer and Olaf Ludwig could face charges of aiding and abetting in bodily injury. (SW)