'Doctors in doping probe also treated' - Supersport

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'Doctors in doping probe also treated'
Supersport, South Africa - 14 hours ago
Investigators probing a major drug scandal in Spanish cycling suspect top-level athletes also used the services of doctors involved in doping procedures, a news report said on Tuesday.


Leading Spanish daily El Pais said Jose Luis Merino Batres and Eufemiano Fuentes - two doctors arrested and charged in the case - independently treated other sportsmen, mainly athletes.

Both Merino Batres and Fuentes are charged with crimes against public health. They deny doping accusations.

El Pais quoted from court documents which, it said, did not name any athlete. Athletics and cycling were the only sports mentioned by the paper.

El Pais said Merino himself used to go to Madrid hotels to extract blood from athletes for later pre-race injection. El Pais said Merino admitted to police that he extracted blood from top-level sportsmen together with Fuentes. However, he said that he was unaware of who these athletes were.

"For me they were numbers or code names. In the bags (with blood) there was just a number and a date of the extraction," El Pais quoted Merino from his testimony.

El Pais reported Sunday that Civil Guard investigations show at least 15 members of the former Liberty Seguros team were among 58 professional cyclists who may have received prohibited substances and blood transfusion in recent years.

The Civil Guard again declined Tuesday to publicly comment on the case.
Manolo Saiz, the former top official at Liberty Seguros, and four others, including Merino and Fuentes, were arrested in May when police seized steroids, hormones and the endurance-boosting substance EPO.

Nearly 100 bags of frozen blood and equipment for treating blood were found, along with documents on doping procedures performed on cyclists. Saiz was questioned and released, and he denies involvement in doping.
Only four cyclists, all Spaniards, were identified by El Pais on Sunday. The newspaper said Saiz told police that at least three Liberty Seguros cyclists - Roberto Heras, Marcos Serrano and Angel Vicioso - had asked for Fuentes to treat them.
The fourth rider identified in the report was Isidro Nozal. Another El Pais report linked former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich to the doping scandal - a claim Ullrich strongly denied Monday - as well as U.S rider Tyler Hamilton, an Olympic gold medalist. Hamilton tested positive for blood doping at the Spanish Vuelta in September 2004. In February Hamilton's appeal against a two-year suspension was unanimously rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. El Pais reported on Monday that among the court documents was a fax, allegedly sent to Hamilton's wife, Haven Parchinski, detailing a doctor's bill for €43,040 ($54,060). The report said Hamilton also had been sent two pages of doctors' files detailing calendars with medications to be taken in advance of the 2003 season. The paper also said that allegedly Hamilton was not only engaged in banned blood transfusion practices, but also used EPO, anabolic steroids, human growth hormones and IGF-1 during his treatment by Fuentes. Liberty Seguros withdrew its team sponsorship shortly after the police seizure. Astana-Wurth took over the team and announced Saiz's resignation this month. On Tuesday, Tour de France organizers said they have asked Astana-Wurth to pull out of this year's race because of a doping scandal. The team's absence would likely push one of the leading contenders, Alexandre Vinokourov, out of the race, which starts Saturday.


Vinokourov team expelled from Tour de France Guardian Unlimited
No Vino at Tour de France? News24
Spanish cyclists 'quit' in protest CNN International
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URL: http://www.supercycling.co.za/defaul.../international

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:26:00 GMT