In addition to presenting its 2018 men’s and women’s teams Thursday night in Berlin, Team Sunweb confirmed the details of an extensive anti-doping program that will run independently of the UCI’s checks.
“We should leave cycling better behind us than when we entered it,” said team CEO Iwan Spekenbrink.
The anti-doping program will be funded by team sponsor Sunweb and run by Dopingautoriteit, the Netherlands’s anti-doping authority. Riders will be subject to blood and urine tests with the same protocol as World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF).
Those tests will also be provided to WADA and CADF to augment a given rider’s biological passport.
“This new program consists of out-of-competition urine and blood test, and interpretation of the test results,” said Herman Ram, CEO of Dopingautoriteit. “The program is fully compliant with WADA standards. This new program is completely independent; the team does not indicate when, where, and which athlete will be tested.”
Spekenbrink said that about a year ago, Sunweb began discussing the potential for this anti-doping program.
“The big question which came to the table was: What do we want? Do we want no positives, or do we want no doping? And it’s very clear we want to have all efforts to have no doping. And the only way is to increase the tests,” Spekenbrink said.
Team Sunweb is home to Giro d’Italia winner and time trial world champion Tom Dumoulin. American Coryn Rivera, winner of 2017 Tour of Flanders, is one of the top riders on Sunweb’s women’s team. The team’s riders also won four stages in the Tour de France last season, as well as the polka-dot and green jersey classifications.
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