Cycling: Net Closing in on Blood-doping Cheats

Amid speculation that a massive blood-doping inquiry in Spain could prove to be cycling's biggest ever drugs scandal, the head of the sport's governing body, the UCI, said yesterday that his organisation would follow through anti-doping procedures even if, as reports suggested, up to 150 cyclists might be involved, not all of them from Spain.

"If we get the evidence we will move on it and complete the process no matter how painful," the UCI head Pat McQuaid told the Guardian. "It has to be done for the integrity of the sport. The message has to get out to anyone who thinks they can get away with [doping] that there are other means to catch people and [a police investigation] is one of them."

McQuaid confirmed that he had been in contact with the Spanish sports ministry to try to speed up the release of evidence accumulated by the Guardia Civil during a three-month investigation into an apparent blood-doping ring centred on a Madrid apartment, where police investigators found a large quantity of banned drugs, 200 sachets of blood and plasma, and equipment for carrying out blood transfusions.

The sachets of blood were apparently labelled with code names, numbers and dates, and the outcome of the investigation may well depend on whether the names can be linked to the sportsmen - mainly cyclists, and some athletes - videotaped entering and leaving the apartment, some apparently carrying bikes with their front wheels removed presumably to fit on a home trainer so that they could undergo physiological testing.

Since the introduction of a reliable test for the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) in 2000, it had seemed likely that cyclists seeking to enhance performance illicitly would return to the 25-year-old practice of blood doping. That involves the removal and storage - at -80C - of blood from the athlete's body, which compensates by producing more red cells. The stored blood, or just its red cells, are then re-injected, massively, briefly enhancing the blood's capacity to carry oxygen to the muscles.

The technique is undetectable if an athlete uses his own blood, but two cyclists, the Olympic time-trial champion Tyler Hamilton and his Spanish team-mate Santi Pérez, tested positive in September 2004 for transfusions using the blood of another person. Moreover, the routine blood tests carried out by the UCI were regularly picking up anomalies in the blood of Spanish cyclists, leading the governing body to alert the Spanish authorities, "two years ago, and two months ago" according to McQuaid, to the probable use of the practice in Spain.

"The Guardia Civil have said they are willing to pass the documents on, so we are waiting on that," said McQuaid. Elsewhere, the new director of the Tour de France, Christian Prudhomme, dropped a heavy hint that the race organisers might take action of their own before the biggest event on the cycling calendar starts in Strasbourg on July 1.

"We will wait for more precise information, especially from the Spanish justiciary," Prudhomme told the French daily paper l'Equipe. "We will not speak about this or that name, but we will do what seems right to us. We will take what seems a responsible course, between now and the start of the Tour."

Prudhomme also welcomed the withdrawal of the sponsor of Spain's biggest cycling squad, the American insurance company Liberty, after the arrest of their team manager Manolo Saiz last week as part of the investigation. "It's damaging in the short term, but it is very, very good and courageous, a very strong signal."

Saiz was arrested together with a former gynecologist Eufemiano Fuentes, known throughout the cycling world as "Ufi" and formerly the doctor at the Las Palmas football club as well as at Saiz's previous team, ONCE, and the Amaya and Kelme squads. Also detained was another team manager, Jose-Luis Labarta of the Comunidad Valenciana team, a laboratory director, Jose-Luis Merino, and a mountain bike racer, Alberto Leon.

Although Saiz was released after less than 24 hours, without charges being placed, Fuentes was put under formal investigation for offences against public health. Fuentes and Merino were released on bail over the weekend, but most attention surrounded the apparent involvement of Saiz.

The Liberty manager is a major player in the world of cycling, a team manager for almost 20 years, head of the teams' representative body for seven years, and a prime mover in the creation of the UCI's ProTour circuit. A controversial figure, he had obtained the services for this year of one of the biggest favourites for the Tour, the Kazakh Alexandr Vinokourov.

"Vino" is not implicated, but still might have to miss the Tour if sanctions were taken against his team by the ProTour's licence commission, which monitors teams' adhesion to the circuit's ethical charter.

"It's made a bit of a ripple already with Liberty stopping, so there are already big consequences for the sport," said one rider.

"This time it's unavoidable. The police have bags of blood with DNA in them, and if they got round to DNA testing it would be done and dusted."

How the net widened


March 2004 Jesus Manzano, a former cyclist with the Kelme team, alleges blood doping took place in the squad. An Italian magistrate passes his testimony to the Spanish authorities

April 2004 Jaime Lissavetsky is named Spain's minister of sport and begins work on an anti-doping law

October 2004 Santi Pérez (Phonak) is banned for blood doping

May-June 2005 Nuno Ribeiro and Isidro Nozal (Liberty Seguros) are prevented from competing following abnormal blood tests

Sept 2005 The Tour of Spain winner Roberto Heras (Liberty Seguros) tests positive for erythropoietin and is banned for two years

Feb 2006 Start of 'Operation Puerto', the surveillance of a Madrid apartment allegedly used for blood doping

May 23 2006 Five arrests including Manolo Saiz, director of Liberty Seguros, Fuentes and Jose-Luis Merino, who runs a laboratory

May 27 2006 Liberty withdraws from sponsorship