The day after implicating four cyclists and scores of other athletes, a German television station said sorry about everything.

The German version of PBS — ARD — now says it shouldn’t have named names and shouldn’t have implicated cyclists and other German athletes for allegedly blood-doping at a Vienna lab called Humanplasma.

According to cyclingnews.com, the retraction came before a broadcast of a biathlon race: Cyclingnews.com quoted an announcer as saying: “It is not justified and not compatible with our professional standards, that such sweeping charges be made without having any evidence to back them up. We regret that accusations and suspicions against athletes arose because of this report.”

Holy moly! ”without having any evidence”???!!! Now that’s a retraction! 

The Richard Kimbled cyclists included former Rabobank rider Michael Rasmussen (who was booted from the Tour de France for lying about his whereabouts in missing a doping test), two-time Vuelta a Espana winner Denis Menchov of Rabobank, and retired cyclists Michael Boogard and George Totschnig.

All issued strong denials after the now-bogus story came out, and we smell a lawsuit or two coming along.

This incident, along with the Italian Olympic committee naming previously cleared Alberto Contador and Alejandro Valverde as cyclists it wants to investigate vis-a-vis Operacion Puerto, is almost beyond belief. The anti-doping crowd means well — and ridding the sport of performance-enhancing drugs is a noble cause – but unfortunately, stories like this show the anti-doping crusaders sometimes spiral out of control.

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