24 Mar 2009

Former Austrian Nordic coach arrested over doping

11:06 am on 24 March 2009

Austria's former national biathlon coach Walter Mayer, at the centre of a 2006 Winter Olympics doping scandal, has been arrested on doping charges.

Mayer was arrested on suspicion of distributing to athletes the blood-booster EPO and related drugs which he purchased from a Vienna pharmacist, who was also arrested over the weekend.

Vienna state prosecutor Gerhard Jarosch declined to say to how many athletes to whom Mayer sold the EPO and the other drugs, or what sports those athletes were active in.

Mayer was banned from the Olympics until beyond 2010 after a blood doping scandal at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.