Operación Puerto doping case

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The Operación Puerto doping case (derived from Operación Puerto, meaning Operation Mountain Pass)^[1] is a Spanish doping case against doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and a number of accomplices, started in May 2006. He is accused of administering prohibited doping products to professional athletes, to enhance their performance. He is said to have helped 200 athletes, of whom 34 names of professional road bicycle racers have been released. Each cyclist also faces individual doping accusations in accordance with international sports doping rules. As of November 2006, seventeen have been acquitted and none have been convicted.

In March 2007, the case was dropped when it was determined that there was a lack of evidence that a crime was committed under Spanish law.^[2]

1 Timeline
2 List of athletes named
- 2.1 Cyclists
- 2.2 Other athletes
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Timeline

[edit] Police action

On May 23, 2006, Spanish Guardia Civil arrested the directeur sportif of the cycling team Liberty Seguros-Würth, Manolo Saiz, and four other people, including doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, accused of doping practices with several riders.^[3] Along with these detentions, Spanish police also raided several residences. In one of them, belonging to Dr Fuentes, they found a thousand doses of anabolic steroids, one hundred packets of blood products and machines used to manipulate and transfuse it.^[4] The Guardia Civil also revealed that a list had been found containing a number of other cyclists also involved in this scheme.

Sponsor Liberty Seguros decided to withdraw their sponsorship, considering the involvement of Saiz in the doping scheme harmed their reputation as well as that of cycling, which left the team named Würth.^[5]

[edit] Suspensions

As more and more names were leaked to the press, the teams began taking measures. T-Mobile Team asked its riders to sign a written statement that they had never worked with Fuentes,^[6] while Phonak Hearing Systems suspended Santiago Botero and José Enrique Gutiérrez, who had just finished second in the 2006 Giro d'Italia.^[7] Tour de France organisers ASO also considered withdrawing their invitations to Würth and Comunidad Valenciana.^[8] On June 1, the director of the latter, José Ignacio Labarta, resigned.^[9]

Meanwhile, team Würth found a new sponsor, a consortium of five Kazakh companies united under the name of the capital, Astana, and became Astana-Würth.^[10] ASO withdrew Comunitat Valenciana's wildcard invitation, moving its riders to send blood samples to be analysed to prove their innocence.^[11] Nevertheless, the organisers of the Vuelta a España also began to consider expelling the team from their race.^[12]

After Spanish newspaper El País published secret details of Operación Puerto, Spanish riders boycotted the Spanish National Road Race Championships, which were cancelled after just 500 metres.^[13] After this publication, which involved many more riders, ASO sent a letter to Astana-Würth asking them not to take part in the Tour de France, which the team ignored. Jan Ullrich, linked to Fuentes by the newspaper, threatened to sue El País.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said that Astana-Würth were to be accepted in the Tour de France, despite the organisers' protests. The Spanish authorities lifted the secret of summary two days before the start of the Tour, formally involving all 56 riders found in Fuentes' lists.

Because Jan Ullrich and Óscar Sevilla were in these lists, T-Mobile suspended them immediately.^[14] Their example was followed by Ivan Basso's Team CSC and Francisco Mancebo's AG2R Prévoyance. ASO demanded that all riders involved were withdrawn from the race by their teams, even though Astana-Würth had received the support of the CAS.

The day before the Tour de France, nevertheless, Astana-Würth yielded to the pressure of ASO and left their concentration for the French race. Five of their riders had been excluded by ASO for involvement in the doping scandal, and this left the team with only four riders (a team of at least six is required to race). Francisco Mancebo, fourth last year and involved in the case, decided to end his career, according to his directeur sportif Vincent Lavenu.

On July 3, Würth also withdrew their sponsorship of Astana. They had continued their sponsorship of the team only if it was not excluded from any race, and therefore decided to put an end to their contribution after the team was excluded from the Tour de France.

Six days later, T-Mobile team fired Rudy Pevenage, directeur sportif of the team, because he was also involved in the doping scheme. On July 21, the team decided to suspend the contracts with Jan Ullrich and Óscar Sevilla, effectively sacking them. On the same day, Spanish cycling newspaper Meta2Mil published a list of codenames used by Fuentes on his lists which had still not been deciphered by the police.

[edit] Additional Leaks

In November 2006, El Mundo claimed that an anti-doping laboratory in Barcelona which analyzed 99 bags of blood plasma seized in Operación Puerto found "high levels of erythropoietin (EPO)" in the plasma. This suggested that the athletes working with Dr Fuentes had been boosting their performance in ways other than just blood doping. El Mundo suggested that those implicated in the scandal had effectively delegated their cheating to Fuentes, and would not have been able to control the level of EPO they were taking, even if they had wanted to.

After studying the Barcelona lab's report, El Mundo described Fuentes's program as follows: riders would visit Fuentes a few weeks before a major race and have blood removed. Fuentes would run the blood through a centrifuge, separating the blood plasma from the red blood cells. The red blood cells would be re-injected into the athletes shortly before their competitions, boosting their resistance to fatigue. If their haematocrit levels (volume of red blood cells) got to be dangerously high, they would re-inject some plasma as well, enhanced with EPO, to dilute the volume of their red blood cells and thus avoid detection.

The Barcelona lab apparently did not identify any athlete responsible for any of the 99 tested bags of blood.^[15]

[edit] Legal repercussions

On July 26, five Astana riders have been formally cleared by Spanish courts. These riders were forced out of the 2006 Tour de France because of alleged links to a blood doping investigation. The five Astana team members: Joseba Beloki, Isidro Nozal, Sergio Paulinho, Allan Davis and Alberto Contador, each received a written document officially clearing them of any links to the ongoing Operación Puerto, the Spanish newspaper El Diario Vasco reported.^[16]

On October 8, the Madrid court in charge of the case told the Spanish cycling federation, the Real Federación Española de Ciclismo (RFEC), that court documents could not be used in the federation's investigations.^[17]

On October 13, Ivan Basso was cleared by Italian authorities due to lack of evidence in the case. Jan Ullrich was similarly cleared by the Spanish courts on October 25, 2006. The judge ruled that both Ullrich and Basso were put under investigation without proof of involvement.^[18]

On October 28, the RFEC has closed all disciplinary files opened against the cyclists implicated in the investigation. However, the RFEC will initiate disciplinary investigations on the former Liberty Seguros-Würth Team director, Manuel Sáiz.^[19] UCI president Pat McQuaid was reported to state that he feels he has been let down by the authorities in Spain. He hoped that teams would require cyclists to submit DNA samples to clear their names.^[20] The investigations into Spanish riders has also been suspended.^[21] On March 7, 2007, the case was dropped when it was determined that there was a lack of evidence that a crime was committed under Spanish law.

[edit] List of athletes named

According to the Guardia Civil report,^[14]^[22]^[23] the following athletes have been named. Note that these 34 athletes, all of whom are cyclists, are only a fraction of the alleged 200 athletes involved.^[24]

[edit] Cyclists

[edit] Teams

Astana-Würth

Allan Davis – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 26),^[16] investigation closed by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (December 14).^[25]
Joseba Beloki – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 26).^[16]
Alberto Contador – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 26).^[16]
David Etxebarría
Jörg Jaksche
Isidro Nozal – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 26).^[16]
Unai Osa
Sérgio Paulinho – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 26).^[16]
Michele Scarponi
Marcos Serrano
Ángel Vicioso

Comunidad Valenciana

Vicente Ballester – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
David Bernabeu – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
David Blanco – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
José Adrián Bonilla – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
Juan Gomis – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
Eladio Jiménez – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
David Latasa – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
Javier Pascual Rodríguez – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]
Rubén Plaza – removed from the case by Spanish courts (July 28).^[26]

[edit] Individuals

AG2R Prévoyance

Francisco Mancebo – initially retired from cycling^[27], but having severed ties with AG2R,^[28] joined Spanish professional continental team Relax-Gam.^[29]

Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears

Constantino Zaballa

Team CSC

Ivan Basso – contract with CSC was terminated by mutual agreement (October 18),^[30] case was dropped by the Federazione Ciclistica Italiana due to lack of evidence (October 27),^[31] has since been employed by Discovery Channel.^[32]

Phonak Hearing Systems

José Enrique Gutiérrez
Santiago Botero – case dropped by disciplinary committee of the Federación Colombiana de Ciclismo (October 2).^[33]

Saunier Duval-Prodir

Carlos Zárate

T-Mobile Team

Unibet

Carlos García Quesada

[edit] Already retired or suspended

[edit] Other athletes

On July 5, Eufemiano Fuentes was quite indignant that only the names of cyclists have been released, and stated that he had also worked with tennis and football players.^[34] On July 27, IAAF was assured by Spanish prosecutors that no track and field athletes were involved.^[35] On September 23, former cyclist Jesus Manzano told reporters from France 3 that he had seen "well-known footballers" from La Liga visit the offices of Dr Eufemiano Fuentes.^[36]