Roche denies blood doping during his professional career

Stephen Roche has said he firmly stands by his previous denials that he had ever taken performance-enhancing substances during his career.

He said one of the men, Dr Giovanni Grazzi, who has been under investigation in Italy, was a team doctor when he was with Carrera. But it was "not possible" that he was ever administered EPO without his knowledge.

"I'm not going to turn around in 10 years' time (and say) maybe somebody did something. I am quite adamant. There's no way Grazzi could have put something in there without me knowing about it. I was very, very strict, incredibly strict, much, much stricter than anybody would imagine.

"I looked at cycling as being a passage in my life, not with it being something I was going to pay for for the rest of my life. I wasn't going to take something I wasn't sure I was taking. There is no way I'll be sitting here saying to you in a year's time 'maybe that's true, he did give it to me, I remember now'. That's not on."

"Giovanni spoke to me when this thing came out in 2000 because I got onto Giovanni and said 'what's happening here . . . how can I be involved?'

"He said: 'Stephen there is no way you are involved in this but basically the blood samples we did with the Carrera team always went back to the laboratory in Ferrara, and that's how your name is down on the list. But basically only for analysis so there is nothing else there that anybody can pull on you'. That's how it's been left since 2000. Nobody has said a thing to me since the year 2000."

He has never been contacted about the case in Italy. "You'd think they would have asked me to see if I had gotten stuff from them or not," he said, speaking to The Irish Times from a hotel he owns at Villeneuve-Loubet Plage, on the French Riviera near Nice.

"I can look anybody in the eye, any judge, any doctor. I know what I've done in my career. I know nothing will ever come back and haunt me, and that gives me my satisfaction." Stephen Roche said he met one of the other men who was under investigation, Prof Franceso Conconi, around 1985 when he did lung capacity tests with him. However, he said that was the extent of his contact with the Italian. During his first stint with Carrera from 1986 to 1987, Stephen Roche said, he recalled Dr Grazzi being involved on the fringes of the team's medical staff. When he returned for a second stint in 1992 and 1993 Dr Grazzi was "more or less the doctor" for the team.

While the findings of the Italian judge relate to 1993, Mr Roche said as that was his last season racing he was under no pressure from his team. "I was riding the Tour (de France) for fun. Why take s*** in 1993 when I was finishing off for fun? That's my answer to it. I finished off in 1992, I won a stage in the Tour into La Bourboule and when I finished that stage I said goodbye to cycling.

"I decided to have one more year to say goodbye to everybody, one last lap. End of story. Why go out there and start taking EPO in 1993 when I had no pressure, no obligation to perform?"

He added that since finishing cycling he had become aware that blood samples he gave at Ferrara, for health checks, had later been used for experiments. "There was additives being added and our blood was being used for experiments. I didn't know anything about, didn't give my agreement, I didn't even know it was being done."

However, he said he was not looking to this as an excuse because he had no need for excuses.