Doping in sport.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, accused of running the biggest cycling doping ring starts trial today.


A number of top riders, including Alberto Contador, the two-time winner of the Tour de France, will be witnesses but none will be in the dock themselves.

The Spanish authorities have been accused of a cover-up because the trial of Eufemiano Fuentes will focus on his work with cyclists, despite evidence he was also involved in sports such as football and tennis.

Fuentes, 57, will appear in court six years and eight months after his offices were first raided but the anti-doping authorities are still waiting to examine the files.

Dave Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, told The Daily Telegraph last week the case was equivalent to “banging a head against a brick wall”, after years of Spanish reluctance to cooperate.

“It’s not just other cases in cycling but in a range of sports,” he said. “The whole purpose of the exercise, and the reason we’ve been so resolute in pursuing this to court, has been to find out who those athletes are.”

In May 2006 police moved in on Fuentes, seizing a fridge full of around 200 bags of blood belonging to athletes, the majority of whom have never been identified.

The operation, code-named ‘Puerto’, brought the arrest of other doctors, sporting directors and trainers suspected of taking part in the doping scheme, and led to 58 cyclists being implicated.

Those in the dock alongside Fuentes are his sister Yolanda; Manolo Saiz, the former Liberty Seguros team director; Vicente Belda, the former Comunidad Valenciana team chief and his deputy Jose Ignacio Labarta. The five will have to answer charges of “an offence against public health” rather than incitement to doping, as that was not a crime in Spain at the time of the arrests.

Defence lawyers for Fuentes and his co-defendants are expected to argue that the cyclists’ health was never endangered because the best technology available was used.

Fuentes is expected to take the witness box on Monday with Contador due to give evidence by the end of the week. The main witness for the prosecution is Jesús Manzano, a former cyclist who claims he was made ill by one of the blood bags used by Fuentes.

The case will be watched closely by the International Cycling Union, already under pressure for its handling of the Lance Armstrong case.

Pat McQuaid, its chairman, was due to speak to Howman this weekend to work out the details of a truth and reconciliation commission. McQuaid has faced calls for his resignation since Armstrong’s downfall but insists he is the right man to tackle the drugs culture of cycling.

McQuaid said: “My focus, since I became president in 2005, is the fight against doping. I have no intention of resigning, there is a job to be done and I intend to do it.”


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/9830691/Spanish-authorities-accused-of-cover-up-as-trial-into-doping-in-cycling-begins-in-earnest.html

Lifted from the Telegraph as the BBC is too much of an arseache to C&P.

What's interesting about this case though is that tennis players and football players have allegedly been linked to this but a lot of the information is either, confused, not full or hidden by having nicknames associated with what would be used to dope.

If this gets blown open to what I fear it might, sport might feel a little bit shit from the past six years.

[GP]

Ronaldo must be shitting himself.

[Shaqiri Is Boss]

Didn't this investigation suddenly go quiet and secretive when it emerged that Real and Barca were clients of one of the main suspects?

It wouldn't surprise me (I think it's pretty nailed on) that there will have been many top footballers and others who were up to exactly the same thing as cyclists, and probably still are. (Yes, Messi yada yada)

I'd still be cynical as to whether it will all come out though. It suits more people for it to stay quiet, though I guess you could say the same about Armstrong.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

I think there was evidence in France that has been lost or misplaced or something.

Put it this way, someone is doing their utmost to stop it from all coming out.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

The use of banned drugs in Australian professional sport is "widespread", a year-long investigation has found.

The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) said scientists, coaches and support staff were involved in the provision of drugs across multiple sporting codes, without naming any individuals.

In some cases, the drugs were supplied by organised crime syndicates, it said.

Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said the findings were "shocking and will disgust Australian sports fans".

The president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, John Fahey, described them as "alarming" but not a surprise.

Announcing the findings at a news conference in Canberra, Mr Clare said that "multiple athletes from a number of clubs in major Australian sporting codes are suspected of currently using or having previously used peptides, potentially constituting anti-doping rule violations".

"It's cheating but it's worse than that, it's cheating with the help of criminals," he said.

The BBC's Nick Bryant in Australia says that in a sports-loving nation like Australia the impact of the report has been huge.

With fans asking which sportsmen and women can be trusted, it is a black day for Australian sport, he adds.

Australia loves sport and hates cheats, and these allegations offend a strong, ingrained sense of fair play. Australians like winning, for sure, but not at all costs. In Aussie Rules, one of the country's most popular sporting codes, players with disciplinary infringements are not even considered for the game's highest honour, the Brownlow Medal. And that's the way fans like it.

Traditionally, sport has been an arena where Australia has projected itself onto the world stage. There is great pride in how a nation of just 23 million people enjoys so much per capita success. If its sporting reputation is tarnished, then so too is its global reputation. That said, two sporting codes under particularly close scrutiny, Aussie Rules (AFL) and rugby league (NRL) do not have much of an international profile.

Australia has also been in the forefront of efforts of international efforts to curb doping. The 2000 Sydney Olympics were billed, for example, as the "clean games". The news that doping is "widespread" and also that there is a link to organised crime, is therefore shocking.

In the absence of more specific details about which athletes, teams and sports are affected, fans have also been left asking which elite athletes they can trust.

Had names, clubs and sporting codes been attached to these allegations, the report released publicly by the Australian Crime Commission presumably would have been even more devastating (a classified report prepared by the ACC apparently contains them). Even without those all-important details, some are calling this the blackest day in the country's sporting history.

In its report, the commission said it looked at the use of a new form of PIEDs (performance and image enhancing drugs) known as peptides and hormones, which provide effects similar to anabolic steroids.

"Despite being prohibited substances in professional sport, peptides and hormones are being used by professional athletes in Australia, facilitated by sports scientists, high-performance coaches and sports staff," it said.

"Widespread use of these substances has been identified, or is suspected by the ACC, in a number of professional sporting codes in Australia."

The use of illicit drugs in some sports was thought to be "significantly higher" than official statistics showed, it added.

In some cases, players had been administered with drugs not yet approved for human use, the report also said.

The commission found that organised crime syndicates were involved in the distribution of the banned substances - something Mr Clare, the home affairs minister, called particularly serious.

"Links between organised crime and players exposes players to the risk of being co-opted for match-fixing and this investigation has identified one possible example of that and that is currently under investigation," he said.

Because criminal investigations are under way the report does not go into details, our correspondent says.

The Aussie rules Australian Football League (AFL) and the National Rugby League (NRL) have said they are already working with the commission.

Sports Minister Kate Lundy: "If you want to cheat, we will catch you"

"We've worked with the crime commission in the last week or so and information has come forward for NRL specifically that affects more than one player and more than one club," Australian Rugby League Commission chief Dave Smith said.

Earlier this week AFL club Essendon asked Australia's anti-doping authorities to investigate supplements administered to players last season.

Sports Minister Kate Lundy said sports organisations would be encouraged to establish "integrity units" and engage the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency and law enforcement agencies to root out the problems.

"If you want to cheat, we will catch you, if you want to fix a match, we will catch you," Ms Lundy said.

The report said there were "clear parallels" between what had been discovered in Australia and the US Anti-Doping Agency investigation into disgraced Tour de France cyclist Lance Armstrong.

It said the links underlined "the trans-national threat posed by doping to professional sport".

"The difference is that the Australian threat is current, crosses sporting codes and is evolving," it concluded.

Mr Fahey, himself a former Australian politician, said he had found the report alarming and that it showed "how deep this problem is".

"But I have to say I'm not surprised. It seems to be a history in sport that you'll address these issues only when something surfaces and you'll try to avoid it until that time, and that was the case in the Olympic movement with doping," he told ABC News in Australia.

"It was the case in cycling, which we've seen so much of in recent times, and now sadly it's the case it seems here in Australia."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21363100

Sport. :rose:

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Fuentes says Real Madrid owe him money.

:haha:

[GP]

Fuentes says Real Madrid owe him money.

:haha:

Ronaldo :haha:

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Even horses are doping now.