Jörg Jaksche and Patrik Sinkewitz have both responded to Gerolsteiner's Markus Fothen, who blasted the two confessed dopers earlier this week on German television, saying, "First they lie forever and then after being caught, they confess everything in order to slide into the 'cooperative witness' program and get a reduced sentence -- that's a no-go." Fothen was also critical that the pair would want to come back to the sport.
At a discussion at the German Sport University in Cologne, Jaksche noted that Fothen has had a positive doping test, according to the dpa. "He was tested positive once, too, for cortisone. Those days it was easy enough to explain away the problem with a faked medical certificate." Fothen answered that by explaining that after an eye operation in 2004, he had eye drops with cortisone in them, for which he had the appropriate certificate. He presented the UCI and the German federation with the certificate when a doping control came back noting "traces of cortisone." Fothen refused further comment, saying he didn't want to discuss the matter "on this level".
