Public prosecutors in Vienna, Austria, have filed charges against a former professional cyclist, identified only as Christof K., for dealing in forbidden substances. It is the first case to be filed under the country's new anti-doping law, which took effect in 2008.
The case is not related to the HumanPlasma blood-doping investigation.
The cyclist in question is charged with distributing forbidden products, including EPO, to other athletes as of the middle of 2008, spokesman Gerhard Jarosch told the Austrian news agency APA.
The 33-year-old was arrested in March 2009, and immediately suspended by the National Anti-Doping Agency.
According to the APA, K. admitted to the “Soko Doping” (special doping investigators) that since 2004 he had regularly received EPO, testosterone and other doping substances from a pharmacist in Vienna. For two and a half years, up until the end of 2006, he is said to have called the pharmacist weekly and then received the products. The trial against the pharmacist opened in Vienna on Thursday.
As of 2007, K. is said to have used a new pharmacist, also in Vienna, and also is said to have supplied at least five colleagues, whose names were not released. These actions continued after the new national anti-doping law went into effect in August 2008.
K. faces up to six months in prison or a fine, if he is found guilty.
Under Austrian law, the full names of persons arrested and undergoing trials are not publicly released. When he was arrested last fall, K. was identified in the media as a moderately successful rider on the national level.
