Cofidis : £25k per annum spent on dope products

Cofidis Trial opened in France this week - with the allegation that the team spent annually, £25,000.00, buying PED's.

Here is the coverage of the trial.


William Fotheringham
Tuesday November 7, 2006
The Guardian

The inquiry that investigated drug-taking within the Cofidis team between 2001 and 2003 discovered that the squad spent up to €37,000 (£25,000) a year on medicines, a court in Paris was told yesterday at the start of a trial involving seven cyclists, including Britain's best Tour de France rider in recent years, David Millar.

Questioning the masseur at the centre of the affair, Boguslaw Madejak, the presiding judge Ghislaine Polge said: "It's very simple. These drugs cause physical deterioration, mental decline and death."

The court in Nanterre heard that the list of banned drugs Madejak is alleged to have provided to a group of Polish professionals is so long that analysing and explaining the drugs will take an entire session, probably tomorrow. The drugs are alleged to have included anabolic steroids, hormones, amphetamines and diuretics used as masking agents.

Polge said that until the end of the second world war, French professional cyclists had a higher life expectancy than the average; since then, the trend had been reversed. "Apart from the fact that a lot of cheating is involved, there is a real public health issue," she told the court.

Millar is accused of "importing, transporting, keeping and using substances dangerous to health" under France's anti-drugs law. He has already served a two-year ban for offences uncovered by the inquiry. While the accused face prison sentences of up to five years and fines of up to €75,000 (£50,000), another key issue this week will be the court's judgment of the extent to which their team's management was complicit. The trial will last until Friday and sentences are expected within a few weeks.

 

This could be fascinating if they go into a lot of detail.

25K euros does not seem like much compared to they money that was flowing through Fuentes network. Heck, it's a day's spending money for Saiz.

 

Bro - it's £25k (€37k) per annum.

Small beer by Manolo's €60k standards - but revealing nonetheless.

 

I still think it seems like a low amount, not enough to indicate wide scale team doping unless it were just steroids and similar junk. What is the monthly cost for EPO for one athlete? Prices are generally about one US cent per IU, so maybe around 500 euros. Multiply by just ten riders for part of the season and you get 25K.

I would be interested in seeing what kind of money Saiz was spending in a year. Figures of up to 500K seem in the realm of possibility. How do you hide something like that in the team's budget?

 

Yeah, but they're buying in bulk. Blood doping is probably more expensive, I'd guess.

Damn, what was it, 240 on the Fuentes' list? 240x$37US... That's a retirement package.

 

Today Philippe Gaumont named CSC rider Stuart O'Grady as a member of Cofidis who participated in the drug use in 2003/4. - Testimony under oath to a French court; I wonder if the UCI will suspend O'Grady based upon this ? Probably not as his dog wasn't mentioned on a hand written fax.

 

Riis must be unhappy with this, given that he is trying to project a "drug awareness" image and feels his image has been tainted by Puerto.

Any translations of the testimony, or any original transcripts that I could translate?

 

Here you can poorly translate this webpage: (O'Grady perferred to snort rather than inject....)

http://www.elpais.es/articulo/deportes/Cien/inyecciones/ano/nada/elppordep/20061108elpepidep_8/Tes/

Uno de los acusados es Gaumont, que sin medir sus palabras volvió a romper ante el juez la 'omertá', la ley del silencio que aún sigue siendo la disposición dominante en la mayor parte del pelotón mundial. Cuenta la agencia France Presse que según Gaumont, corredor del Cofidis entre 1997 y 2004, los ciclistas han recurrido habitualmente a la farmacopea. En su declaración ante el tribunal, Gaumont, que como corredor hizo famoso un gran lobo tatuado en su antebrazo, su símbolo, ha descrito cómo sus compañeros de equipo Stuart O'Grady y David Millar "esnifaban" medicamentos tras regarlos con alcohol, cómo el autobús del equipo se convertía durante las contrarreloj en un ambulatorio por el que todos los corredores pasaban para pincharse, cómo cada uno tenía una centrifugadora con la que medir su nivel de hematocrito y no pasar el límite de 50 después de doparse con EPO...

 

Wasn't it O'Grady who said Landis wouldn't be welcome back in the peloton? What was he snorting?

 

No that was Jen Voigt when talking to Charlie Wiggens...... medicines ! (pseudoephedrine)

 

Oh and they dipped and soaked there coke based-mix into alcohol to get a better effect ! This is just before a race in a team bus ! 2004 boys, 2004 ! 6 years post Festina these boys are doing gear in a team bus just prior to race start ! They must have been wired like chicken fences....

 

I can't translate from Spanish, but an auto translator says: "In his declaration before the court, Gaumont ... has described how his teammates Stuart ÓGrady and David Miller "snorted" medicines after watering them with alcohol, how the equipment bus during the ITT became an ambulance bus when one by one the runners happened to puncture [their tires?], how each one had a centrifugal machine with which to measure his level of hematocrito and not to pass the limit of 50 after drugging himself with EPO..."

What gall, for Cofidis then to argue that LA was doping and it was clean?!

 

Bad translation my boy; contextual for Spanish translation please (how would you think you would translate "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog into Spanish ? - By translating each word at a time or the entire meaning of the sentence ?) What Gaumont was saying that the team bus looked like an ambulance as they injected themselves n the bus along with all blood reading parameters etc. Inject not puncture you fool…. And cyclists not runners ! Christ !

 

L'Equipe: "Gaumont a tenu à préciser : «Personne chez Cofidis ne m'a poussé à me doper, mais je leur reproche de jouer les vertueux alors que leur système pousse au dopage».

"Gaumont said, 'Nobody at Cofidis pushed me to dope, but I reproach them for pretending to be virtuous (dope-free) when their system pushes towards doping.'"

 

Hmmm.

Gaumont has history - in 1997 he was done for doping and then he was caught again as part of the Millar/Cofidis investigation.
What he has said may well be true - but I wouldn't rely on it unless it corroborated.
Gaumont has already been shown to have lied.

 

Agreed Miller has never confirmed these stories; maybe to protect himself ? Gaumont is alone on the rave party atmosphere in the team bus..... sounds a real hoot thou... let the good times roll at Cofidis... makes the blood doping boys look so boring and beige.

 

Oh my god! They must have just came pouring out of that bus like a bunch of professional wrestlers.

Hide the women! Panama Red and the Festina boys are in town!

Holy mackerel.

That's just another weekend group ride in Miami.

 

Former Cofidis team doctor Jean-Jacques Menuet denied on Wednesday that he had ever given doping products to the riders in his care - amongst them Briton David Millar.

Speaking as a witness in the Cofidis trial in Nanterre, Paris - in which 10 individuals, including Millar, are all accused of infringing France's anti-doping laws - Menuet stated that he had never recommended or adminstered banned drugs.

“I have done my job within the correct legal limitations, on both a national and international level.” Menuet, who was a doctor for Cofidis between 1999 and 2004, told the court.

Directly accused by former Cofidis riders Phillipe Gaumont and Robert Sassone of helping them use banned substances, Menuet counterattacked by saying Gaumont in fact had obtained illegal drugs from the notorious medic Bernard Sainz. Nicknamed Doctor Mabuse, Sainz, a former vet, had already been suspected of supplying banned substances in the past to both cyclists and horse-racing circles. Sainz has also frequently been linked to another former Cofidis rider who has frequently figured in doping affairs: Belgian Frank Vandenbroucke.

Menuet said he had had “difficulties” when he joined Cofidis with “five or six riders” whom he could not name because it was a medical secret. He did say that amongst their “problems” were an addiction to “Stilnox” - a sleeping pill - as well as unspecified types of “sexual addictions.”

Menuet added that he had used some pills as “placebos, kidding the riders with the colours and smell.” At the same time, he said he had urged some of the Cofidis pros to “think more about their family” and less about their career. However, his attempts to resolve the team's problems by bringing in a psychiatrist to follow the Cofidis squad during a Tour de France failed miserably: “he left, nauseated by it all.”