Cycling: Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) is ending its sponsorship of professional cycling immediately to distance its brand from the doping scandals that have blighted the sport, it said in a statement today.
"We arrived at this decision to separate our brand from further
exposure from doping in sport and cycling specifically," said Hamid
Akhavan, Chief Executive of Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile unit.
Deutsche Telekom ended sponsorship of both the men's and
women's teams. It had been sponsoring cycling since 1991.
The company said it had been negotiating with Neuer Strassen
Sport, the operator of the T-Mobile Team, over terminating a
contract that was set to run until the end of 2010. Both parties
had agreed to keep the details confidential, it said.
"We have worked very hard with the current team management to
promote a clean cycling sport but we reached the decision to
continue our efforts to rid all sports of doping by applying our
resources in other directions," Akhavan said.
"Deutsche Telekom AG wants to make it clear that this action
is not based on any disagreement with or misconduct by team
management," he added.
T-Mobile has asked prosecutors for copies of reports on
ex-team member Patrik Sinkewitz, who was fired in July after
testing positive for testosterone, after he gave details of his
history of doping use to a magazine.
Sinkewitz has been giving evidence to the German Cycling
Federation and hopes to return to cycling.
Team T-Mobile had said in August that Deutsche Telekom would
continue its involvement in cycling to support it in the fight to
create a clean sport, and would honour the contract with the
T-Mobile team until it ended in 2010.