SAN PATRIZIO, 16 March 2004 — Italy’s reigning World Cup champion Paolo Bettini won the sixth stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico race yesterday, held over 185km between Monte San Pietrangeli and here to extend his race lead.
The 30-year-old Quick Step rider held off two big name sprinters, Spain’s former two-time world champion Oscar Freire and German Erik Zabel, at the finish line to claim his second stage in the race this year.
Bettini will now look to consolidate his race lead in Tuesday’s final stage over 162km around Benedetto Del Tronto.
The Tirreno-Adriatico race, Italy’s first major race of the season, is a popular warm-up for the Milan-San Remo World Cup opener on March 20 in which Bettini is the reigning champion.
We Had to Take Drugs, Says Rider Gaumont
In Paris, former Cofidis rider Philippe Gaumont says he would have been kicked out of his team if he had refused to take performance enhancing drugs.
“If you did not take drugs, you were just fired after a year,” Gaumont, who is under investigation in an alleged doping scandal involving Cofidis, told yesterday’s Le Monde newspaper.
Gaumont, a 1992 Olympic bronze medalist in the 100-km team competition, has been accused of drug taking twice in the past. He tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone in 1997 and for amphetamines in 1999.
He said he did not take anything in the first six months with his first team, Castorama, whom he joined in 1994.
“In June, 1994, a team doctor gave me a shot of Kenacort and it went on from there,” he added. Kenacort is a corticosteroid, a banned substance which reduces fatigue and swelling.
Gaumont said he was amazed by the quantity of drugs he had to take before time trials.
“An intravenous injection of Fonzylane to dilate the veins and let the blood spread well. Some injectable caffeine. A pill of Theostat so that I could breathe easily and some analgesic to stop pain,” he said.
Gaumont said random tests were ineffective.
