Absolution

Stefan Schumacher was absolved from defrauding former Gerolsteiner team manager Hans-Michael Holczer.

Schumacher had claimed that on the Gerolsteiner team everyone knew that the rider’s doped, and that both doctors and Holczer had been aware of the extent of doping within the team.

Holczer, on the other hand, maintained that he knew nothing about doping, and that Schumacher had deceived the team by artificially enhancing himself for the 2008 Tour de France.

In 2008 Schumacher tested positive for the erythropoietin drug Mircera, and his two time trial wins were taken away from him.

Schumacher has earlier stated that doping on the Gerolsteiner team was as much a part of the everyday routine “as a plate of pasta after a workout,” and that “just about anything you wanted you could take from the medicine box.”

The Stuttgart court absolved Schumacher from the fraud charges, and the judge, Martin Friedrich, established that Holczer’s testimony was not sufficient to establish Schumacher’s guilt.

Rudolf Scharping, president of the German Cycling Federation (BDR) terminated the court drama, and stated that the ruling "does not change the fact that doping is a fraud on the fairness of the competition, and to the spectators, and it endangers the health of doping athletes."