O'Grady still a great - Jonker

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Still a great ... Patrick Jonker says Stuart O'Grady should still be considered an Aussie cycling legend despite his doping admission. Source: Mark Gunter / AFP

STUART O'Grady is still one of cycling's greats despite admitting to doping for the 1998 Tour de France, says retired Australian rider Patrick Jonker.

Jonker, like O'Grady, rode in the now infamous 1998 Tour - an event he believes would have been near impossible to win naturally.

"The sport during that period of time, there was a lot of manipulation of red blood cells,'' 44-year-old Jonker told Fox Sports today.

"To win a Tour de France during that period of time on bread and water (clean) would've been almost impossible.''

Jonker is a five-time Tour rider who finished 12th overall in 1996.

He said he respected O'Grady for confessing to using the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) and still considered him "one of the toughest riders'' he'd ever come across.

"My thoughts towards Stuart won't change because of this. I still regard him as one of the all-time greats that competed in the sport that, for a decade, was definitely very tainted,'' he said.

"If you want to shun Stuart O'Grady, you should shun the whole sport of cycling for that period of time.''

Jonker said that he himself was among very few athletes who would not have stood to benefit from the EPO trend of the time because of his unusual biological make-up.

"Some people that compete in sport have a naturally extremely-high haemoglobin (level).

"Even today, I'm probably borderline illegal - and no I'm not taking EPO today. But there are a few athletes out there (like me).

"I don't know if I could call myself fortunate - I didn't have much success during my period of time.''

Jonker retired in 2004 immediately after winning Adelaide's Tour Down Under, ending 12 years as a professional rider.

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