SOME of the biggest names in world sport — and outside of cycling — are expected to be named as drug cheats within the next three months.
The Leader has been told their names will be revealed as a result of another long-running investigation into doping, separate to the USADA investigation which caught seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and members of his former US Postal cycling team.
A total of 190 sportsmen of interest are now involved, with only 35 being cyclists.
Authorities are confident evidence can now be presented on some of the world’s top sportsmen — including football and tennis stars and well-known track athletes — after Spain’s long-running Operation Puerto finally goes to court in January, nearly seven years after the case started.
Puerto started out as a Spanish Civil Guard investigation of Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, who is alleged to be one of the key figures in supplying doping products and blood transfusions to world athletes.
Fuentes, former Liberty Seguros cycling team boss Manolo Saiz and four others will be tried in Madrid’s Superior Court from January 28 to March 22, and face charges which could lead to jail terms of up to two years.
The sports ministry is bringing the case against the six in conjunction with cycling’s governing body — the International Cycling Union — the Spanish Cycling Federation and Italy’s national Olympic committee (CONI).
The six accused were arrested after Spanish police raided homes and clinics in Madrid and Zaragoza in May 2006 and uncovered bags of blood, blood transfusion equipment and anabolic steroids. In just one, belonging to Fuentes, they found a thousand doses of anabolic steroids, 100 packets of blood products, and machines to manipulate and transfuse them.
Fifty cyclists were implicated, including banned Tour winner Alberto Contador and Ivan Basso. Contador and Basso are among 35 cyclists called to testify as witnesses.
The casualties from Operation Puerto are already unprecedented in cycling, and indeed in world sport, as the three top favourites for this year’s Tour de France won by Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins were all forced out. But Fuentes was indignant that only cyclists had been named and said he also worked with tennis and football players. Since then the Spanish investigation has uncovered alleged big-time doping in other major world sports, and thus the Operation has been widened.
Last year on Spanish television Tour de France winner Oscar Pereiro complained: ‘‘Football players are applauded for doping, while cyclists are censured for it.’’
Discussion on the show “Punto Pelota” grew heated as Pereiro named names of football players he claimed have doped.
‘‘Everyone at San Mames, Balaidos, Barcelona shouts ’innocent’ and I have to put on a mask to walk down the street.’’
It wasn’t the first time footballers had been named. In January 2004 the now retired French star, Zinedine Zidane, admitted taking a list of drugs that are alleged by Italian prosecutors to have been performance-enhancing.
The then Real Madrid midfielder told a Turin court he was given a variety of substances by Juventus officals during his five years at that club, including Esafosfina, normally used for low phosphate levels; Neoton, used to strengthen the heart; and Samyr, an anti-depressant.
Zidane stressed he had not taken such substances before playing in Italy nor since joining Real Madrid in 2001.
As the Leader’s story explained last week, sports governing authorities like cycling’s UCI are still trying to find a credible test to detect if and when athletes have blood doped.
One woman writing to the Leader insinuated a problem existed close to home: ‘‘.... maybe start by getting rid of the drug rings who phone call/bully clean athletes at 10.30pm in Sydney.’’
TEST WINNERS
CRITICS of other sports accuse authorities of deliberately not spending the money targeted on testing players, and of aiming at losers and not winners.
Leading up to 2008 Beijing Olympics, the International Tennis Federation apparently conducted 79 per cent of their out-of-competition tests AFTER the Games.
The following year, 49 out-of-competition missions resulted in ‘‘no sample being collected’’. Those players included some of the top players on the international tennis circuit.
Out of the 65 tennis players listed as testing positive, you have to go back to 1995 to find a big-name male player (Mats Wilander) and 2007 for a top female (Martina Hingis) — and both tested positive for cocaine.
Should they have caught the cheats sooner?
