Jörg Jaksche is doing everything he can to have his one-year doping suspension reduced. After having asked the Austrian cycling federation to reduce his sentence by six weeks, he has now announced that he will appeal that sentence to the independent arbitration committee of the 'Österreichische Bundessport Organisation', a public Austrian sports institution. "I was forced to this step, in order to keep all my legal options open," he told sport1.
Jaksche admitted that he wanted to be eligible to ride again as soon as possible in order to help find a contract for the coming season. "Six weeks more or less can make a big difference during the season. I will be of interest to teams only if I can prepare for and ride the Tour de France. Or the Giro."
He didn't regret his decision to confess to his doping past, but noted that, "In a sense, I am the dumb one, because I was the first to take this step and therefore got the hardest sentence. I didn't have to do a 'coming-out', I had never tested positive, had no pressure and I had a contract with Tinkoff."
The sentence should be reduced, he said, because, "I have paid and suffered enough, lost a lot of money, paid my dues and learned my lesson. Six weeks more won't change anything. I simply want to ride again."
He did not dismiss the idea of going all the way to the Court of Appeals for Sport. "I don't want to do that, though. The whole reason for asking the federation to reduce the sentence was to find an unbureaucratic way to be re-integrated. I was being a role-model for many pros, who followed my example. Now they will just think, my confession didn't serve much..."
