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http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/10/12/2010-10-12_stefan_matschiner_found_guilty_on_blooddoping_charge_plans_tellall_book_about_pe.html?r=sports
BY Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Tuesday, October 12th 2010, 4:00 AM
In American pro sports, ever so rarely, there are whispers about player agents leading their clients to performance-enhancing drugs or methods.
Then there is Stefan Matschiner of Austria, a former agent who represented dozens of world-class athletes, and who freely admits he personally helped some of his clients withdraw, manipulate, and reinfuse their own blood, a banned method that can drastically increase endurance without much risk of laboratory detection.
Matschiner, who was sentenced to prison Monday in Austria, insisted in an interview last week with the Daily News that he stopped helping athletes dope after the summer of 2008, when tough anti-doping laws went into effect in Austria. But Matschiner says he took a hands-on role in blood transfusions - arguing that the procedures involved were more or less medically safe, considering the larger context of grueling, high-speed sports events like the Tour de France.
"You're doing your body a service," Matschiner told the News. "It's nothing anybody could cry about."
It would be much more dangerous to take a lot of EPO over a long period of time, he adds, referring to the anemia drug erythropoietin, which spurs red blood cell production.
Matschiner represented top cyclists like Denmark's Michael Rasmussen and Austria's Bernhard Kohl, both of whom were suspended from cycling at the competitive peaks of their careers. Kohl testified for the prosecution in Matschiner's trial, as did Austrian triathlete Lisa Huetthaler.
Monday, Judge Martina Spreitzer-Kropiunik found Matschiner guilty of attempted blood doping and the distribution of doping products.
Matschiner will remain free, however. Spreitzer-Kropiunik applied a 15-month jail sentence, with 14 months suspended, and the remaining month covered by time Matschiner already served when he was arrested in early 2009 and held in jail. He will remain on probation for three years.
"I don't regret anything because I can't say I put anyone's health in danger," Matschiner reportedly told the court, stating at the start of his trial in August that doping was as integral to elite sports "as breakfast."
Matschiner spoke with The News last week in his first on-record interview for an American publication. A former NCAA middle distance runner for the University of Memphis, he speaks perfect English and has a wry sense of humor about the rapidly-evolving cat-and-mouse game of the anti-doping fight.
"The last contact I had with a blood bag is March 2009," Matschiner says. "I'm not up-to-date anymore."
Matschiner is planning to publish a tell-all book about his behind-the-scenes role in the careers of world-class athletes like Kohl, who finished third in the 2008 Tour de France but tested positive for CERA, an EPO-like drug. (Kohl was banned for two years, confessed, fingered Matschiner, and recently proclaimed that the three-week Tour can't possibly be won without doping.)
Matschiner says he was not surprised by recent revelations that three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of Spain had tested positive for Clenbuterol, a banned substance with that can open the lungs up to collect more oxygen.
"Clenbuterol in general is something that is quite common in the world of cycling," says Matschiner. "It's usually orally used on a pretty frequent basis. It's just a guess on my side, but hypothetically, if an athlete takes a very small dose it would help him breathe. The half life is so short that my only guess for a positive case for such a small amount is that he took a little too much."
An anti-doping laboratory in Germany also found in Contador's urine samples a suspicious spike in metabolites of DEHP, a plasticizer used in blood bags and other products. DEHP leaks into the bags' contents, which is potentially bad news for anyone who has been blood doping in recent years. The World Anti-Doping Agency bans intravenous infusions, and the labs it accredits can store samples for up to eight years.
Matschiner says a typical blood doping effort with Kohl involved extracting a half liter of the rider's blood months before the Tour, running it through a centrifuge to isolate about 180 grams of red blood cells, storing those in a blood bag and injecting them back into Kohl during the Tour.
Sometimes they would inject half a bag in one day and the remainder two days later; sometimes they would inject two bags at once. The bags were about as big as a typical tube of toothpaste.
"It's not a lot of blood, but it gives you a lot of boost," Matschiner says. "Usually the effect comes a day later, supplying the muscle cells with oxygen."
Red blood cells carry oxygen to the muscles, allowing an athlete to postpone the onset of exhausting anaerobic workouts. EPO stimulates the body's natural production of such cells, but anti-doping labs have been testing for EPO since 2000, leading many athletes to return to transfusions, which were common in cycling in the 1980s, before the invention of EPO.
"It's like you have 10 percent more inside," says Matschiner. "There are some athletes that can immediately go out and feel it. Usually on the first day they don't feel so well. You can compare it with altitude training. For two days you feel like s--t, then a boost comes."
A blood test on Matschiner's athletes would show an elevated hematocrit score. But since those scores vary from person to person (and often from hour to hour), a rider would be safe from the anti-doping cops as long as they stayed below a threshold established by the International Cycling Union, which governs elite cycling. The UCI demands that any rider exceeding a 50-percent hematocrit score be suspended from competition.
"With the performances they have to bring every day in a three-week race it's really not an issue," says Matschiner, who points out that the effort of the race will naturally wear down an athlete's hematocrit score. "You go in with 45 and come out with 37. Don't tell me that's healthy. But if you substitute a little blood, you go from 45 and 43."
The U.S. government has taken an interest in blood doping since this spring, when deposed 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis accused his former teammate, Lance Armstrong, of using the practice while leading the U.S. Postal Service cycling team. Armstrong, who is the subject of an active federal grand jury probe in Los Angeles, has adamantly denied the charges.
Matschiner gets along well with several of the athletes who received bans because of the doping he helped them perpetrate, but he has had a bitter falling out with Kohl, who accused him of providing CERA. Matschiner says that is not true.
The sports agency Matschiner founded in 2003 had a stable of more than 20 track athletes, marathoners and cyclists. Matschiner says that despite cycling's crackdown on doping, athletes have an easy time evading the system. If all else fails, Matschiner says, they "just hide somewhere and are not able to be tested."
As of now, he is planning to publish his book, "Grenzwertig," in the middle of January in several European markets. The title, which translates to "Borderline," is rich with metaphorical resonance, given the international borders Matschiner and his clients crossed, as well as the doper's game of pushing right up to established limits of blood values and hormone concentrations.
"It's going to be a detailed explanation of what I did," Matschiner says. "I'll explain everything in detail."
Read more at: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/10/12/2010-10-12_stefan_matschiner_found_guilty_on_blooddoping_charge_plans_tellall_book_about_pe.html
BY Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Tuesday, October 12th 2010, 4:00 AM
In American pro sports, ever so rarely, there are whispers about player agents leading their clients to performance-enhancing drugs or methods.
Then there is Stefan Matschiner of Austria, a former agent who represented dozens of world-class athletes, and who freely admits he personally helped some of his clients withdraw, manipulate, and reinfuse their own blood, a banned method that can drastically increase endurance without much risk of laboratory detection.
Matschiner, who was sentenced to prison Monday in Austria, insisted in an interview last week with the Daily News that he stopped helping athletes dope after the summer of 2008, when tough anti-doping laws went into effect in Austria. But Matschiner says he took a hands-on role in blood transfusions - arguing that the procedures involved were more or less medically safe, considering the larger context of grueling, high-speed sports events like the Tour de France.
"You're doing your body a service," Matschiner told the News. "It's nothing anybody could cry about."
It would be much more dangerous to take a lot of EPO over a long period of time, he adds, referring to the anemia drug erythropoietin, which spurs red blood cell production.
Matschiner represented top cyclists like Denmark's Michael Rasmussen and Austria's Bernhard Kohl, both of whom were suspended from cycling at the competitive peaks of their careers. Kohl testified for the prosecution in Matschiner's trial, as did Austrian triathlete Lisa Huetthaler.
Monday, Judge Martina Spreitzer-Kropiunik found Matschiner guilty of attempted blood doping and the distribution of doping products.
Matschiner will remain free, however. Spreitzer-Kropiunik applied a 15-month jail sentence, with 14 months suspended, and the remaining month covered by time Matschiner already served when he was arrested in early 2009 and held in jail. He will remain on probation for three years.
"I don't regret anything because I can't say I put anyone's health in danger," Matschiner reportedly told the court, stating at the start of his trial in August that doping was as integral to elite sports "as breakfast."
Matschiner spoke with The News last week in his first on-record interview for an American publication. A former NCAA middle distance runner for the University of Memphis, he speaks perfect English and has a wry sense of humor about the rapidly-evolving cat-and-mouse game of the anti-doping fight.
"The last contact I had with a blood bag is March 2009," Matschiner says. "I'm not up-to-date anymore."
Matschiner is planning to publish a tell-all book about his behind-the-scenes role in the careers of world-class athletes like Kohl, who finished third in the 2008 Tour de France but tested positive for CERA, an EPO-like drug. (Kohl was banned for two years, confessed, fingered Matschiner, and recently proclaimed that the three-week Tour can't possibly be won without doping.)
Matschiner says he was not surprised by recent revelations that three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of Spain had tested positive for Clenbuterol, a banned substance with that can open the lungs up to collect more oxygen.
"Clenbuterol in general is something that is quite common in the world of cycling," says Matschiner. "It's usually orally used on a pretty frequent basis. It's just a guess on my side, but hypothetically, if an athlete takes a very small dose it would help him breathe. The half life is so short that my only guess for a positive case for such a small amount is that he took a little too much."
An anti-doping laboratory in Germany also found in Contador's urine samples a suspicious spike in metabolites of DEHP, a plasticizer used in blood bags and other products. DEHP leaks into the bags' contents, which is potentially bad news for anyone who has been blood doping in recent years. The World Anti-Doping Agency bans intravenous infusions, and the labs it accredits can store samples for up to eight years.
Matschiner says a typical blood doping effort with Kohl involved extracting a half liter of the rider's blood months before the Tour, running it through a centrifuge to isolate about 180 grams of red blood cells, storing those in a blood bag and injecting them back into Kohl during the Tour.
Sometimes they would inject half a bag in one day and the remainder two days later; sometimes they would inject two bags at once. The bags were about as big as a typical tube of toothpaste.
"It's not a lot of blood, but it gives you a lot of boost," Matschiner says. "Usually the effect comes a day later, supplying the muscle cells with oxygen."
Red blood cells carry oxygen to the muscles, allowing an athlete to postpone the onset of exhausting anaerobic workouts. EPO stimulates the body's natural production of such cells, but anti-doping labs have been testing for EPO since 2000, leading many athletes to return to transfusions, which were common in cycling in the 1980s, before the invention of EPO.
"It's like you have 10 percent more inside," says Matschiner. "There are some athletes that can immediately go out and feel it. Usually on the first day they don't feel so well. You can compare it with altitude training. For two days you feel like s--t, then a boost comes."
A blood test on Matschiner's athletes would show an elevated hematocrit score. But since those scores vary from person to person (and often from hour to hour), a rider would be safe from the anti-doping cops as long as they stayed below a threshold established by the International Cycling Union, which governs elite cycling. The UCI demands that any rider exceeding a 50-percent hematocrit score be suspended from competition.
"With the performances they have to bring every day in a three-week race it's really not an issue," says Matschiner, who points out that the effort of the race will naturally wear down an athlete's hematocrit score. "You go in with 45 and come out with 37. Don't tell me that's healthy. But if you substitute a little blood, you go from 45 and 43."
The U.S. government has taken an interest in blood doping since this spring, when deposed 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis accused his former teammate, Lance Armstrong, of using the practice while leading the U.S. Postal Service cycling team. Armstrong, who is the subject of an active federal grand jury probe in Los Angeles, has adamantly denied the charges.
Matschiner gets along well with several of the athletes who received bans because of the doping he helped them perpetrate, but he has had a bitter falling out with Kohl, who accused him of providing CERA. Matschiner says that is not true.
The sports agency Matschiner founded in 2003 had a stable of more than 20 track athletes, marathoners and cyclists. Matschiner says that despite cycling's crackdown on doping, athletes have an easy time evading the system. If all else fails, Matschiner says, they "just hide somewhere and are not able to be tested."
As of now, he is planning to publish his book, "Grenzwertig," in the middle of January in several European markets. The title, which translates to "Borderline," is rich with metaphorical resonance, given the international borders Matschiner and his clients crossed, as well as the doper's game of pushing right up to established limits of blood values and hormone concentrations.
"It's going to be a detailed explanation of what I did," Matschiner says. "I'll explain everything in detail."
Read more at: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/10/12/2010-10-12_stefan_matschiner_found_guilty_on_blooddoping_charge_plans_tellall_book_about_pe.html
