Cycling/News: The trial of former members of the Cofidis team made further waves in France yesterday when the former Olympic medallist Philippe Gaumont said the doctor now in charge of supervising health checks on French professionals, Armand Megret, had injected him with his first banned drug, the cortisone Kenacort, in 1994.
Dr Megret is expected to appear today as a witness in the case, which has brought seven current and former professional cyclists - including Scotland's David Millar - before a court in Nanterre on drugs charges.
Yesterday Gaumont said: "One hundred injections a year was not enormous for a professional cyclist" and described a milieu in which riders "sniffed" medicines and took turns to be injected in team buses before time-trials.
"A culture of the syringe?" asked the presiding judge, Ghislaine Polge.
"Yes," said the cyclist.
Meanwhile the directeur sportif of the newly formed Tinkoff team said he hopes to recruit the 1997 Tour de France winner, Jan Ullrich, to prevent the German sinking into a depression like the 1998 winner Marco Pantani, who died of a cocaine overdose in 2004.
"I believe the worst could happen to Jan this winter if he does not believe he will race again," said Omar Piscina.
With all this, Britain's latest recruit to the professional ranks, Geraint Thomas of Wales, must be wondering about the world he is entering. The former winner of the amateur Paris-Roubaix classic signed yesterday for the Italian team Barloworld, who are candidates for a place on the ProTour circuit.
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