Italian doping officials search Austrian staffers

Many of nation's cross country, biathlon athletes subjected to drug tests

TURIN, Italy - Italian authorities searched the residences of some staff members of the Austrian biathlon and cross-country teams early Sunday, looking for banned substances, officials said.

The International Olympic Committee also conducted unannounced, out-of-competition drug tests on “a number of Austrian cross-country and biathlon athletes,” the IOC said.

Alfred Eder, a trainer for the Austrian biathlon team, said police searched and interviewed athletes for four hours Saturday night. “We are very angry,” Eder said. “It is not very gentlemanly.”

The case began when the World Anti-Doping Agency discovered blood-doping equipment in Austria that was connected to Walter Mayer, WADA chairman Richard Pound told The Associated Press.

Mayer is the Austrian Nordic team coach who was banned by the IOC following a blood-doping case at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, where he was alleged to have performed blood transfusions. He and Volker Mueller, the German chiropractor who prescribed the blood treatments, were banned from the Turin Games and the 2010 Games in Vancouver.

Pound told the AP doping control officers went to Austria to test athletes there and could not find them. Instead, he said, they found blood-doping equipment linked to Mayer and were told he was with the Austrian team in Italy.

“We were concerned something might be going on in Italy,” Pound said.

The agency passed that information on to the IOC, which said late Saturday it brought Italian authorities into the case and conducted its own unannounced testing.

“(The) IOC is fulfilling its responsibility to conduct anti-doping control on athletes who might have been under his (Mayer’s) influence,” the IOC said in a statement.

The searches were conducted by Italian investigators. It was not immediately clear whether they turned up any evidence.

Italian police were outside a private home rented by the Austrian biathlon team near San Sicario. One officer guarded the door to the house. An Austrian ski team van was parked in front. Inside, Austrian athletes could be seen sitting on a sofa.

Police said a similar search was going on at Austrian quarters in nearby Pragelato.

Any doping case would be investigated and prosecuted by Italian authorities under the nation’s criminal anti-doping law.

Russian biathlon star Olga Pyleva was stripped of a silver medal and expelled Thursday after testing positive for the stimulant carphedon.

The IOC has said it plans to test a total of 1,200 samples at these games — a 72 percent increase over the number in Salt Lake City.

No Austrians have medaled in biathlon or cross-country at the Turin Games; the highest finish in either sport by an Austrian athlete so far is Wolfgang Perner’s fourth place in the men’s biathlon 10km sprint.

The 2002 investigation of Mayer began after a cleaner found blood transfusion materials in a house used by the Austrians at the Salt Lake City Games.

The Austrians claimed the equipment was used for ultraviolet radiation treatment of athletes’ blood to treat and prevent colds and flu, and not for performance-enhancing purposes.

However, the IOC said any manipulation of blood was a form of blood doping and the group’s executive board ruled that the Austrians violated the Olympics’ anti-doping code.

The Associated Press