(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-18 14:19

"I had veins a centimetre outside of my skin. I spent the night vomiting blood. I thought I was going to die," he said.

"I was the only one paying the price (of the police probe) despite 53 negative tests and, I swear, without ever having doped."

Cyclist Danilo Di Luca, the winner of this year's Giro d'Italia, has also been linked to Santuccione through police phone taps from 2004.

Di Luca, who denies wrongdoing, has yet to hear from Torri if he faces disciplinary action because of a separate probe by a prosecutor in Di Luca's home town of Pescara.

Any sanction against Di Luca would further rock cycling, still reeling from a Tour packed with doping allegations.

Dane Michael Rasmussen, who has a home in Italy, was sacked by his Rabobank team and thrown out of the Tour while leading the race for lying to the team about his training whereabouts, an allegation he denies.

The team said Rasmussen had told them he was in Mexico before the Tour when he had in fact been in Italy. The rider has not been charged with any doping offence.

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