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Eufemiano Fuentes

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Fuentes in 2000

Eufemiano Fuentes (born 1955) is a Spanish sports doctor who was implicated in the Operación Puerto doping case.

Biography

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Fuentes was once an athlete. He then became the team doctor of Team ONCE, Amaya and Kelme. The former Kelme rider Jesús Manzano accused Fuentes of being involved with doping.

Team doctor of the Kelme team in 2005. At that time he had been the doctor of the Kelme team for 16 months. He announced that he was retiring from involvement with professional cycling, citing health and family reasons as well as a desire to investigate retinoblastoma cancer in the Instituto del Cáncer de Canarias.[1]

Fuentes was arrested by the Guardia Civil on May 22, 2006, together with four others: the manager of the Liberty Seguros team Manolo Saiz, José Luis Merino a haematologist at an analytical laboratory in Madrid, Alberto León, a professional mountain biker, and José Ignacio Labarta, who was at that time the assistant sports director of Comunidad Valenciana.[2]

In Fuentes' clinic in Madrid, 186 blood bags were found belonging to professional athletes and marked with coded names, besides EPO, steroids, and growth hormone.[3] The scandal that grew from the arrests implicated well-known road racing cyclists and include former Tour de France favourites Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Francisco Mancebo, Michele Scarponi, Tyler Hamiliton, José Enrique Gutiérrez Cataluña, Roberto Heras, Dario Pieri and large parts of the Comunitat Valenciana and former Liberty Seguros cycling squads. Alberto Contador was also a suspect, but was later cleared of any involvement by the Spanish courts and world cycling's governing body, the UCI. Fuentes continually denied having performed illegal operations. He said that he did not work exclusively with cyclists but had other athletes as clients such as footballers and tennis players.[4] In December 2010, a fellow inmate claimed Fuentes had told him, "If I would talk, the Spanish football team would be stripped of the 2010 World Cup".[5] Fuentes denied having said this in a 2013 interview.[6]

In a further doping scandal, in 2010, Fuentes was arrested by Spanish police as part of Operación Galgo (Operation Greyhound). In a series of simultaneous raids across five provinces on 9 December, Spanish police seized a large quantity of anabolic steroids, hormones and EPO, as well as laboratory equipment for blood transfusions. According to Público newspaper, Eufemiano Fuentes and his sister Yolanda were the leaders of the alleged plot. Also arrested were the athlete Marta Domínguez, who was released on bail after having been charged with the trafficking and distribution of doping substances, and Alberto Leon, in whose fridge anti-doping police found several bags of blood. Leon was found dead shortly after, the result of an apparent suicide.[7] In January 2013, the Operacion Puerto trial went underway, and Fuentes offered to reveal the names of all the athletes he helped doping. The judge, Julia Santamaria, told him that he was not under obligations to name any other athletes others than the cyclists implicated. Fuentes stated that he supplied athletes in other sports with drugs and said: "I could identify all the samples [of blood]. If you give me a list I could tell you who corresponds to each code on the [blood] packs."[8]

Spain lacking anti-doping laws, Fuentes was charged with "endangering public health".[9] His main defense consisted in saying that the blood transfusions were conducted safely and were healthy for the athletes.[10] This point of view was highly contested, notably by former clients and cyclists Jesús Manzano and Jörg Jaksche, who claimed that the blood transfusions were performed in dangerous conditions and put their health at risk.[11]

In April 2013, Fuentes was sentenced to one year in prison for breaking public health laws and was banned from practicing sports medicine for four years.[12] On 14 June 2016, the verdict was overruled and Fuentes was cleared of all charges. However, 211 blood bags from his laboratory were handed over to the World Anti Doping Association for investigation.[13][14]

References

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  1. ^ "Eufemiano Fuentes quits". Cyclingnews.com. February 2005. Archived from the original on 2012-07-23. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  2. ^ "Saiz arrested on doping charges". cyclingnews.com. May 2006. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  3. ^ Friele, Robert-Jan; Mark Misérus (23 January 2013). "Thomas Dekker was klant bij Spaanse dopingarts Fuentes". de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Retrieved 23 January 2013.
  4. ^ "Eufemiano Fuentes breaks off silence". Archived from the original on 2008-02-22. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  5. ^ "Fuentes: " Si je parle, on retire la Coupe du monde à l'Espagne"" (in French). sudpresse.be. 2010-12-13. Archived from the original on 2010-12-15. Retrieved 2010-12-14.
  6. ^ Garai, Josu (5 April 2013). ""No he tratado a ningún jugador de la selección española de fútbol"". Marca. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  7. ^ Key Suspect in Doping Probe Found Dead The wall street journal, January 11, 2011
  8. ^ Magnay, Jacquelin (30 January 2013). "Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes told he does not have reveal athletes he treated in doping inquiry". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved 31 January 2013.
  9. ^ Govan, Fiona (28 January 2013). "Eufemiano Fuentes accused of 'endangering public health' in Madrid court following 2006 Operation Puerto scandal". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  10. ^ Cossins, Peter (29 January 2013). "Fuentes: we gave transfusions for health reasons". Cyclingnews. Future Publishing Limited. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  11. ^ Rogers, Iain (11 February 2013). "Jaksche casts doubt on Fuentes defense in Puerto trial". Yahoo! Sports. Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  12. ^ Tremlett, Giles (30 April 2013). "Doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes' sentence shocks anti-drugs bodies". theguardian.com. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  13. ^ Fotheringham, Alasdair (14 June 2016). "Operacion Puerto blood bags to be handed over to anti-doping authorities". cyclingsnews.com. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
  14. ^ Operation Puerto blood bags handed over to Wada for laboratory testing, Owen Gibson, The Guardian, 6 July 2016
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"Tour de France: Inside the Blood Doping Investigation". Der Spiegel. 10 July 2006. Retrieved 18 November 2022.

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