It was a seismic story in the middle of the 2025 Tour de France: a senior member of Ineos Grenadiers staff was sent home from the race over alleged links to a German blood-doping ring.
David Rozman was the head carer of the Ineos cycling team, a job which involves all manner of support for riders including nutrition and massage.
The Slovenian had a long association with the team, now known as Netcompany-Ineos Cycling Team, stretching back to 2011 when he joined what was then Team Sky during their heyday, as Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome sparked the British team’s near-decade of Tour de France dominance under the leadership of Sir Dave Brailsford.
Rozman was first named publicly in relation to the case by The Irish Independent in an article published during last year’s Tour. The next day, L’Equipe splashed the Rozman story, and the Ineos head carer’s name was published in the British press for the first time two days later by The Times.
It followed an investigative documentary by German broadcaster ARD called Secret Doping: In the Slipstream, broadcast shortly before the Tour began, in which Rozman was not named for legal reasons. The ARD documentary revealed that a member of Ineos staff had allegedly shared messages with a notorious doping doctor, Mark Schmidt, and that some of those messages were used as evidence in Schmidt’s criminal trial.
Schmidt stood trial in Munich in the autumn of 2020, after he was arrested as a key part of Operation Aderlass (translation: “bloodletting”). Schmidt confessed to almost all of the 150 charges against him and admitted he was the ringleader of a sophisticated doping network involving cyclists and cross-country skiers. One Austrian skier, Max Hauke, was caught red-handed in the middle of a blood transfusion in pictures seen around the world.
Schmidt was sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison, fined £140,000 and banned from practising medicine for nearly eight years.
Eight riders, including the famed Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi, were banned from cycling as a result of Operation Aderlass. Yet the ARD documentary claimed that several people implicated during Schmidt’s trial continued their careers in cycling and were not investigated by the sport’s authorities.
One of them was alleged to be Rozman. Some of the alleged messages between Rozman and Schmidt were published by The Irish Independent. They included a text sent to Schmidt, one month before the 2012 Tour de France won by Wiggins, which read: “Do you still have any of the stuff that Milram [Schmidt’s disgraced former team] used during the races? If so, can you bring it for the boys?”
Then, during the Tour, the day before Froome won on La Planche des Belle Filles and Wiggins claimed the yellow jersey, text messages allegedly revealed how Schmidt visited Team Sky’s hotel to meet Rozman for “a beer”.
In another message, Rozman appeared to send Schmidt the contact details for a suspected drug dealer, based in Slovenia and codenamed Maestro Baltazar, who was allegedly in the business of supplying banned substances.
The Independent has contacted Team Ineos for comment, both from the team’s hierarchy and from Rozman, but has not received a response.
In fact, there has been very little said about Rozman’s alleged relationship with Schmidt at all. Important questions about whether he sent those texts and, if so, what was meant by them, remain unanswered.
Rozman kept quiet. He was confronted by German journalist Hajo Seppelt in the spring of 2025, while working at the Giro d’Italia. Rozman is said to have quickly shut down the conversation once Operation Aderlass was mentioned, directing Seppelt to his team’s senior executives for questions by email, which were later rebuffed with “no comment” answers.
After Rozman was named in the media, Ineos released a statement saying: “INEOS Grenadiers Cycling Team is aware of recent media allegations relating to the 2012 season and a member of its staff. These allegations have not to date been presented to the team by any appropriate authority, however the team has made a formal request to the International Testing Agency (ITA) to request any information it considers relevant. The team reiterates its policy of zero tolerance to any breach of the applicable WADA codes, historic or current.”
The controversy was expected to pile extreme pressure on Brailsford. The Times journalist David Walsh, who was instrumental in bringing down Lance Armstrong, said it was “a tipping point” for the Ineos team. “Brailsford or somebody at Ineos has to explain what was meant by [Rozman’s alleged texts to Schmidt],” Walsh told The Cycling Podcast. “Maybe he thinks it will go away. I don’t believe it will. It’s absolutely not good enough for Dave Brailsford to bat us away and say, ‘I’ve no comment on this’.”
But Brailsford said nothing. He was tracked down at the Tour de France the following day and told journalists: “No comment.” When they persisted, he added: “F*****g come on, guys,” before turning away.
Days later, Ineos said Rozman was stepping away from the race after being summoned by the International Testing Agency (ITA) for an interview about the allegations.
Interestingly, Ineos revealed they had commissioned an external law firm to conduct a “thorough review” of the case months earlier, after Rozman was first approached by the ITA in April 2025.
Ineos said: “David Rozman was informally contacted in April 2025 by a member of ITA staff, who asked him about alleged historical communications. Although the ITA assured David at the time that he was not under investigation, Ineos promptly commissioned a thorough review by an external law firm.
“The team has acted responsibly and with due process, taking the allegations seriously whilst acknowledging that David is a long-standing, dedicated member of the team … To date the team has received no evidence from any relevant authority … The ITA has advised the team that it cannot share any further information, due to legal and confidentiality restrictions. Both David and the team will of course co-operate with the ITA and any other authority.”
What happened to the thorough review by an unspecified external law firm? The Independent contacted Ineos in March 2026 to ask for the findings of this review, and was told to “refer to the previous statement released by the team”, which made no mention of the law firm’s report or its conclusions.
Likewise, no public outcome has emerged from the ITA’s inquiries. When contacted, the ITA could not even confirm if the interview with Rozman ever took place, due to confidentiality rules. The ITA’s investigation also faced a challenge of time-bar restrictions, because the alleged texts in question dated back more than a decade.
It remains unclear why cycling’s authorities did not act sooner, or whether they were made aware when evidence about Rozman and others came to light during Schmidt’s trial in late 2020.
The Independent asked the ITA whether it had seen the evidence presented in the court case at the time, and was told: “When the Aderlass matter was uncovered in 2019, the UCI requested to receive the evidence gathered by law enforcement authorities in Austria and sanctioned the riders and support personnel who were involved.
“Thereafter, the ITA, for the first time, received information pertaining to the elements mentioned in the ARD documentary from the German authorities in early 2025 and did its due diligence to conduct a thorough investigation ... The ITA Intelligence & Investigations team took the necessary investigative steps to determine whether there was evidence of anti-doping rule violations, regardless of potential statute of limitations issues. The outcome of this investigation did not allow us to refer a potential case to the UCI at the time.”
The story has gone quiet. Brailsford still hasn’t spoken on it. Rozman is back working for Ineos. His photo remains on the team’s website, with the same caption: “David is one of the longest-serving members of our staff and takes on the important role of Head Carer.”
There is of course a wider context here, given the string of controversies to dog the team over the years, such as Bradley Wiggins’ therapeutic use exemptions, the jiffy-bag scandal and the select committee inquiry which found Team Sky crossed ethical lines in pursuit of victory.
This is a sport which projects modern reformation from its nadir of the early 2000s. A Tour de France rider hasn’t failed an in-race test since 2015. The testing programme is more intense than ever, as riders are finding out this summer with late-night wake-up calls by doping control officers.
Yet where there is silence, doubts linger. German rider John Degenkolb told the ARD documentary: “There will never be 100 per cent clean cycling. I think that’s an illusion that we can rule out from the outset.”
There has been no great swell of public support from former Team Sky riders or staff members. The most notable comments have come from 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, now director of racing for Netcompany-Ineos.
“I wasn’t surprised that [Rozman] knew some doctor that ended up being a bit suspect,” Thomas said, speaking in an interview with The Guardian. “But just because you know someone doesn’t mean you’re guilty. I was surprised at how quickly it blew up and the bad press he was getting.”
One might argue that the allegations went beyond simply Rozman knowing someone. But the story has faded away. And like many of the controversies surrounding the team, we will probably never know the full truth.
