POSTED: May 17th 2011
NewsUpdate
Spanish police hold 26 after new doping crackdown targets cycling veterans
KEIR RADNEDGE / Sports Features Communications
LONDON/MADRID, May 17: Spanish police have arrested 26 people – including the director of a cycling club and seven British citizens – in a swoop against a network trafficking doping substances and questionable medicines.
This latest action maintains the Spanish police campaign which led to the controversial Operacion Puerto in 2006 then Operacion Galgo last autumn which saw the arrest and questioning of a number of Spanish sports personalities.
A police statement said that the latest crackdown in Madrid, Andalucia and eastern Spain had broken the “largest international network operating in Spain for the trafficking of illegal substances, growth hormones and doping substances.”
The statement specified the seizure of “700,000 doses of illegal pharmaceutical products and 10,000 ampoules of growth hormone.”
It added: “The director-general of a team of well-known cycling veterans, who include in their ranks former champions of the world and of Europe, has been arrested while taking delivery of a significant quanity of a substance commonly known as EPO."
A laboratory used for the preparation of growth hormone for sale on the internet had been shut down.
Police said that one sector of the network’s operation had dealt in the “international sale and distribution of medicine purporting to combat erectile disfunction.”
The most high-profile doping controversy concerning cycling at the moment concerns last year's Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and a dispute over contaminated meat which is shortly to be considered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Keywords · doping · Operacion Puerto · Operacion Galgo · Contador · doping network
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