The Phonak cycling team will disband at the end of the year, team owner Andy Rihs announced Tuesday, ten days after team leader Floyd Landis was sacked because of the Tour de France doping scandal.
Rihs said the Landis affair had been the deciding factor.
”As a passionate cyclist, I am bitterly disappointed that the sport of cycling apparently has become a synonym for doping,” he said.
”I truly regret this development and it has brought me to the decision of disbanding the Phonak Cycling Team per the end of 2006,” Rihs said in a statement distributed at a press conference in Zurich.
Rihs said he had found few alternatives to closure, in particular due to uncertainty surrounding the renewal of Phonak’s ProTour licence for next season.
Phonak’s sporting director John Lelangue will be trying to find places for the riders in other teams.
Rihs, a successful businessman and a cycling fan, ordered a major shake-up last season in the wake of a rash of doping scandals.
In 2004, three top Phonak riders failed doping tests in swift succession and were subsequently banned.
They included then team leader and Olympic time-trial gold medallist Tyler Hamilton, 2004 Tour of Spain runner-up Santiago Perez — both for illicit blood transfusions — and 1998 world champion Oscar Camezind for EPO (erythropoietin).
More recently, Sascha Urweider was sacked by the team after he also tested positive for excess testosterone in February. The 25-year-old Swiss cyclist was banned by the Swiss Olympic federation for two years.
Other Phonak riders — Giro runner-up Jose Enrique Gutierrez and Colombian Santiago Botero were provisionally dropped on June 2 after they were named in media reports on the massive ”Operation Puerto” doping probe in Spain. — AFP
