Stefan Schumacher is training hard in his German home region for a possible comeback in the fall of this year. Schumacher is still suspended for doping until August 28, 2010. Without the hectic life of the race circuit going on, Schumacher used the time to get married to his long-time girlfriend.
Schumacher has trained intensively already and could start a comeback sooner rather than later. "I am fit and I am eager to race again," he told teckbote.de. The former Gerolsteiner rider is hoping to find a Pro Continental team to get his career re-started. He says that he is already in talks with several teams, but squashed rumors that Acqua e Sapone is one of them. "There is no discussion about this right now."
Schumacher admits that trying to race again this year will be ambitious, as his suspension runs out towards the later part of the season. "The timing is certainly not ideal to find a team," he says. Still, he is hoping to race again in the Vuelta a España, which starts on August 28, the first day he would be eligible to put on a race number again.
Yesterday, he married his long-time girlfriend in Nürtingen, Schumacher's hometown near Stuttgart.
Schumacher tested positive for CERA during the 2008 Tour de France, where he won the two time trial stages. Traces of the product were found in his system in Beijing, where he was thirteenth in the TT. Schumacher appealed the decision to CAS and lost. He dropped initial efforts to go to Swiss federal court over the CAS decision.
Schumacher has had some problems with doping controls in the past. In 2005, he tested positive for Cathin, but was cleared by the Dutch federation. At the time he was racing for Shimano-Memory Corp (now Skil Shimano) and the Dutch federation had allowed him to use Cathin for an attested allergy. On August 3, 2005, he was cleared of the charges.
His third place in the 2007 Road Cycling World Championships in his home area of Stuttgart almost did not materialize. He was found to have a hematocrit level of 50.5 percent, which usually draws an automatic two-week ban. Schumacher blamed it on diarrhea. A subsequent test was found to be under 50 percent and the urine sample also came back negative.
His positive control from the 2008 Tour de France was also controversial. The samples had been stored at warm temperatures and were sent back and forth between Lausanne and Paris several times. During the shipment, the samples were not sealed and clearly marked with his name. In mail conversations from the French anti-doping agency AFLD, which was in charge of the 2008 Tour de France tests, he was occasionally addressed as Michael Schumacher, the race car driver.