NORDIC WALKING NEWS ITEM

Six Austrian Nordic Skiers Banned fo Blood-Doping

FRIDAY, 27 APRIL 2007

The International Olympic Committee handed down the heaviest anti-doping penalties in its history last night, banning six Austrian Nordic skiers for life after uncovering the most extreme case of systematic drug use since the modern Games began.

The biathletes and cross-country skiers were banned from future involvement in the Olympic movement after a police raid on an apartment shared by all six in Turin during last year's winter Games.

Acting on a tip-off from the World Anti-Doping Agency and a request from the IOC, the Italian authorities discovered a quantity of medical equipment consistent with a professional and organised programme of blood doping.

In the apartment police found syringes, blood bags, butterfly valves for intravenous infusion, bottles of saline, a haemoglobin meter which had been used 59 times in 10 days, and a device for determining the blood group of a sample as well as quantities of banned substances.

The biathletes Wolfgang Perner and Wolfgang Rottmann and the cross-country skiers Martin Tauber, Jürgen Pinter, Johannes Eder, Roland Diethart and Christian Hoffmann were all declared "permanently ineligible" for future Olympic competition. The sanctions are the first to be handed down on the basis of possession of doping paraphernalia rather than a positive test, and their severity was increased by evidence of what the IOC described as "a conspiracy and a cover-up".

To read more about this news story, please visit http://sport.guardian.co.uk.

GLOBAL NORDIC WALKING SEARCH

Entire Site | Info | News | Pictures | Forum

JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER

Stay up-to-date with all nordic walking News by becoming a member and joining our nordic walking Community.

SUBMIT NEWS ITEM

If you know any Nordic Walking Events or News that you would like to share with the world, then we invite you to Submit a News Item.