thunder said:
just clarifying. Bot does not absorb the o2. It was metapohr. The new capacity. The body needs to adjust to use it.
So I read.
Found it
The ex-cyclists who aided dope doctor
By C. Arribas and J.A. Hernandez
Eufemiano Fuentes, busted a year ago, used network of contacts to supply riders during races
A year ago today the cycling fans picked up their morning papers to read the dramatic news of a police bust against a suspected doping ring in Madrid. Among the five men arrested were then director of the Liberty Seguros team, Manolo Saiz, and the personal doctor to several top cyclists, Eufemiano Fuentes . Saiz was apparently caught in the act of paying the medic 60,000 Euros for services rendered.
A year after the initial May 23 Operation Puerto raid, with a number of leading names from the international peloton now either suspended by their teams and under investigation for their alleged involvement in Fuentes' doping ring, new details of the Spanish medic's modus operandi are still coming to light.
Fuentes' operational base was the Madrid apartment where the Civil Guard uncovered refrigerated blood bags, besides doping substances and files on his clients, but the Canary Islander also used an international network of contacts to assist riders competing in the sport's three great annual competitions: the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España. According to the Civil Guard's probe, Fuentes had a list of "friends" who helped him transport his business and liaise with cyclists as the cycling roadshow moved around Europe.
Among these contacts two prominent ex-cyclists feature: a French rider implicated in his day in the so-called Festina Case which rocked the Tour of 1998; the other is said to be an Italian, the "number three" in Fuentes' filing system - Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso occupying the first two positions - under the codename Sansone.
On July 12, 2004, the Tour was enjoying a rest day in Limoges with the rigors of the Pyrenean stages to come. Fuentes called his client cyclists, one by one, to a flat he told them he had been "lent by a friend" in the city. There, the riders received transfusions of their own blood, extracted before the Tour and stored in the apartment weeks before the appointed day.
One cyclist noticed a trophy cabinet in the flat, containing, among other items, the points cup from the 2000 Vuelta a Burgos. The Civil Guard looked into the annals of that race, and found the corresponding name of French rider Pascal Hervé, a Festina rider in the glory days of Richard Virenque and himself suspended for using EPO in the 2001 Giro. Hervé now lives in Limoges.
In Italy, prosecutors are investigating possible links between Fuentes and an Italian doctor, Luigi Cecchini. A key to the establishment of this connection is uncovering the rider codenamed Sansone in Fuentes' paperwork. The Civil Guard does not yet wish to reveal the identity of this ex-rider, but based on his competition/doping schedule from the 2002 and 2003 seasons, they suggest he was one of the best one-day "classic" race cyclists in the world before retiring in 2004. According to the 2002 planner, the cyclist spent 10 January days with Fuentes in the Canary Islands, undergoing a course of EPO and anabolic steroids before joining the Fassa Bortolo team.
Among the entries for 2003 in Fuentes' detailed file is a trip to the rider's home in Italy on the eve of the Milan-San Remo race. About the cyclist, a neighbor of Cecchini, Fuentes notes: "17/03/03: he paid for all the medication (1,153) and gave me 1,500 for José Luis [Merino Batres, ex-director of blood transfusions in the Madrid region] and 6,000 for me, as a down payment on the sum agreed. In total, he is going to transfer me 8,653 euros."
The rest day was on the Monday, Virenque actually won on the Wednesday and Basso won at La Mongie on the Friday.
