Spanish police have arrested 10 suspects in Madrid and Barcelona and smashed an international sports doping ring allegedly linked to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, officials said.
Police said the network was implicated in competitors’ positive doping tests at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, cycling’s 2010 Tour of Spain and 2009 Tour of Portugal, as well as the 2010 Spanish athletics championships.
Although police believe they have dismantled the ring, a second round of raids and arrests cannot be ruled out, a spokesman for the regional Catalan police said on Tuesday.
OLYMPICS
Police said they swooped on the group ahead of this year’s Olympic Games in London.
Given the difficulties identifying final clients “and the proximity in time of the London 2012 Olympic Games, we decided to dismantle the group when the head of the organization” was in Spain, they said in a statement.
Among those detained was the alleged brainchild, a Spanish-Colombian doctor identified only as Alberto B.N. “who had many contacts in elite sport,” the statement said.
The doctor, who was implicated in “multiple doping cases in different countries,” was arrested at Madrid-Barajas airport on March 5, allegedly with doping susbstances in his possession, police said.
STEROID SHOP
The operation began last summer when police were investigating a shop in Mataro, near Barcelona, that sold anabolic steroids to athletes, officers said. The shop was allegedly linked to a Catalan athlete’s positive test for a synthetic steroid called EPO, or erythropoietin, in the 2010 Spanish athletics championships, the statement said.
The shop received EPO from Morocco via two people, one of whom was a nurse at a dialysis center, “where he is suspected of stealing different types of EPO,” the police said.
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