AUSSIE O'GRADY ADMITS TO EPO USE

SYDNEY, Newly-retired Australian cycling great Stuart O'Grady has admitted using the banned blood-booster EPO before the 1998 Tour de France, reports said on Thursday.

The confession comes just three days after the 39-year-old Olympic gold medallist and 17-time Tour rider announced his retirement from the sport.

“Leading into the Tour I made a decision, I sourced it (EPO) myself, there was no one else involved, it didn't involve the team in any way,” O'Grady told News Limited newspapers.

“I just had to drive over the border and buy it at any pharmacy.

“The hardest part of all this is I did it for two weeks before the Tour de France. I used extremely cautious amounts because I'd heard a lot of horror stories and did the absolute minimum of what I hoped would get me through.”O'Grady, a former track cyclist who won medals at three Olympics, including gold in the Madison at the 2004 Athens Games, took the first of his four career Tour stage wins that year in a race that was overshadowed by the Festina doping scandal.

Festina was kicked off the race after a medical team