Olympic chief Jacques Rogge said Saturday that former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich could be stripped of his Olympic gold and silver medals from the Games in 2000.

Ullrich won the men's Olympic road race in Sydney, where riders from his Telekom team also took the silver and bronze medals, and also claimed silver in the time trial.

However, the German is among several top cyclists on whom suspicion has fallen in the wake of a series of doping confessions and revelations from former doctors, trainers and cyclists with links to the Telekom cycling team.

Although Ullrich, now retired, has not tested positive, Rogge said he could be stripped of his Olympic silverware if it is established he doped during the Games.

"The IOC will investigate the revelations that have been made by the riders from Telekom, because several of them took part in the Olympic Games," Rogge told Belgium's Le Soir newspaper.

Last week a doctor from the University of Freiburg in Germany, a specialist center in sports medicine which is funded by government money, admitted supplying drugs to amateur cyclists between 1980 and 1990.

During that period the doctor, Georg Huber, supervised the medical needs of cyclists who were part of Germany's Olympic program. Huber is the third doctor from the reputed clinic to be charged with doping offences relating to cycling.

Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid, who led the long-term health supervision programs of riders in the Telekom then T-Mobile team, were sacked after admitting that they gave the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin) to riders from the German outfit in the 1990s.

Rogge added: "We will look into the admissions of the doctors from the University of Freiburg. Our aim is to find out the periods in which doping was going on."

The Telekom team's confessions have now brought the Games in 2000 under close scrutiny.

Former Tour de France runner-up Andreas Klöden won silver in Sydney and Alexander Vinokourov won the bronze. Klöden and Vinokourov, contenders for this year's Tour de France, now ride for the Astana team.

Asked if those medals could be taken away, Rogge replied: "Of course, it remains a possibility."

It has been another year of turmoil for the sport of cycling due to the Operación Puerto doping affair in Spain and a number of revelations, notably from former Telekom riders Erik Zabel and Denmark's Bjarne Riis, who admitted he took EPO to win the 1996 Tour de France.

However, Rogge praised the continued anti-doping crusade of the International Cycling Union (UCI), which has "adopted extremely severe measures with long-term health supervision of athletes and a marked increase in doping controls, which is unique in the world of sport.”