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Austrian Federal Police officers are standing at the finish area of a classic 15km classic cross-country ski competition at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Seefeld, Austria, Wednesday, February 27, 2019. The Austrian authorities have stated that five elite athletes and four others stopped during doping raids in the country and in neighboring Germany at the Nordic World Ski Championships. (AP Photo / Matthias Schrader)
VIENNA – The blood doping case, which began with police raids at the Nordic World Ski Championships four days ago, spread to cycling on Sunday.
In Austria, local authorities have confirmed the information provided by local media that an Austrian professional cyclist was doped after being arrested on Friday following an investigation into an alleged blood doping network.
The Attorney General of Innsbruck's spokesman, Hansjorg Mayr, said that a "Tyrolean cyclist" was suspected of sports fraud in connection with the "case" of a German doctor and of his accomplices ".
"The man was arrested Friday, he confessed, and he was released the same day," said Mayr, who has not identified the cyclist in accordance with Austrian laws on the protection of private life.
This was the first arrest of a winter sports athlete outside the police raids on Wednesday in Erfurt, Germany, and the Nordic World Championships in Seefeld, Austria.
These raids immediately led to the arrest of nine people, including Austrian cross-country skiers Max Hauke and Dominik Baldauf, four-time Olympian Alexei Poltoranin and Estonian team mates Karel Tammjarv and Andreas Veerpalu. All five have been temporarily suspended by the International Ski Federation.
The doctor at the center of the case is Mark Schmidt, who worked for the Gerolsteiner cycling team at the time when Austrian rider Bernhard Kohl was stripped of his third place and the polka dot jersey of best mountaineer of the Tour de France 2008 for doping.
Schmidt, who was arrested in Erfurt, where he practices medicine, has always denied having committed wrongdoing. The other three people arrested were associates.
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