Spain’s anti-doping agency is looking into allegations that doping practices have spread beyond cycling and into soccer.
Ana Munoz, the director of Spain’s anti-doping watchdog, said yesterday that the agency is “gathering information” about allegations by a former club president that Spanish team Real Sociedad had its players use performance-enhancing substances.
Inaki Badiola told Spanish sports daily AS this week that before he took over as president in 2008 that the club had made “under-the-table payments” for six years for “medicines or products classified as doping” substances.
Badiola said Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor allegedly at the center of the Operation Puerto doping ring currently under trial in Madrid, “could have been” the supplier to the Basque club.
“But he himself [Fuentes] should confirm this in the trial going on right now for Operation Puerto,” Badiola told AS.
* A government investigation has found widespread use of banned drugs in elite Australian sports facilitated by organized crime gangs that may also have led to match fixing and the manipulation of betting markets.
The Australian Crime Commission’s yearlong probe identified the use of substances including peptides, hormones and illicit drugs across a number of sports, Justice Minister Jason Clare said. Doping has been facilitated by sports scientists, coaches and doctors, while criminal networks have been identified in the distribution of illegal substances, he added.
* A Dallas promotions company sued Lance Armstrong yesterday, demanding he repay $12 million in bonuses and fees it paid him for winning the Tour de France.
SCA Promotions had tried in a 2005 legal dispute over the bonuses to prove Armstrong cheated to win before it ultimately settled and paid him.