Coach admits giving steroids to Olympic cyclists in the '80s, By: Roy Kammerer

May 27, 2007

BERLIN - The doping scandal in German cycling spread to the amateur ranks when an Olympic team doctor admitted providing performance-enhancing testosterone to riders in the 1980s.

Georg Huber, who worked on six Olympic teams, acknowledged he gave cyclists testosterone between 1980 and 1990 after two former riders named him in Saturday editions of the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Huber was suspended immediately by German cycling authorities and the University of Freiburg.

The 64-year-old Huber worked at the college clinic where two doctors were suspended this week and face a life ban for supplying blood-booster EPO to Team Telekom riders in the 1990s, including 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis.

On Friday, Riis became the first Tour de France winner to admit using performance-enhancing drugs to win the sport's premier race.

Christian Henn, a former Team Telekom rider who this week admitted using EPO, told the newspaper the doping began while he was on a youth national team.

"It was made clear to us they were doping in the East [the former Soviet bloc], so we also had to take something," said Henn, now a sporting director with the Gerolsteiner team. "The whole thing took place in close cooperation with Huber."

Huber has been head doctor for the German paralympics team and worked for the German skiing federation.