A former trainer who once worked with now-retired Jan Ullrich has claimed that the 1997 Tour de France winner was injected with erythropoietin during the 1996 edition of the race.

Jeff d' Hont, a Belgian soigneur employed by the Telekom team from 1992 till 1996, claimed in the German weekly newspaper Der Spiegel that Ullrich took the banned blood booster in 1996.

He also claims the German team's medical supervisors, who coninue to work for the team under its current name T-Mobile, encouraged use of EPO.

D'Hont accused two doctors, Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid, of having administered injections of EPO in 1996, the year in which Ullrich's Danish teammate Bjarne Riis - now director of CSC - won the Tour.

The accusations are particularly serious as Lothar Heinrich remains T-Mobile’s team doctor. The German team dismissed Ullrich in July 2006 for his implication in the Operación Puerto doping scandal, which is still being investigated.

T-Mobile was restructured at the end of last season after the height of the scandal, and began this season promising to spearhead the fight against doping in the sport. The team gave the job of monitoring and dope testing its riders to the specialists of the University of Fribourg, under Heinrich's supervision.

"If these accusations against the doctors at the University of Fribourg are confirmed, we are going to search for alternatives," promised Bob Stapleton, the new general manager of T-Mobile.

D'Hont, who had a book published in Germany this week on his experience at the heart of cycling, accused Riis, the current manager of CSC, of winning the 1996 Tour while using EPO.