"Bad blood" at T-Mobile in 2006

The investigation into doping practices at the T-Mobile team took a bizarre turn Friday when it was disclosed that at least one blood transfusion had to be cancelled because the stored blood had clotted, the prosecutors revealed on Friday. To transfuse it could have been fatal for the recipient.

"Mr. Sinkewitz said that after the first stage of the Tour de France 2006, the accused Dr. Schmid did not transfuse blood, because this blood was dangerous or unclean," Freiburg head public prosecutor Wolfgang Maier told the dpa press agency. Sinkewitz testified that he was at the Uni Clinic three or four times last year "in order to give blood and then to be freshened up with a transfusion of blood that he had given up before."