Spanish doctor Marcos Maynar Mariño sent an email offering comprehensive urinalysis and steroid profiling at 50 euros per athlete to as many as ten professional cycling teams including Gerolsteiner, Milram, CSC and Columbia . Maynar offered to provide a complete analysis consistent with the same control methods used by the International Cycling Union (UCI). The services would be conducted by the Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad de Extremadura in Cáceres, Spain (“Dos médicos españoles, acusados de dopar,” July 20).
According to the German television station ARD, Spanish doctor Marcos Maynar offered these services as for internal testing allowing athletes to monitor their doping to ensure that their use of performance enhancing drugs would not be detected by doping controls at the 2008 Tour de France and other pro cycling events. Maynar responded to the allegations that he aided and abetted doping by suggesting that ARD had ulterior motives stemming from bitterness over disgraced cyclist Jan Ullrich (“Marcos Maynar niega que quiera favorecer el dopaje,” July 21).
“Since Jan Ullrich’s tested positive, the Germans have wanted to shit on the Spaniards.”
Maynar admits to sending out the email but only to help pro tour teams with their own internal controls; he denies that his services would allow athletes to escape the detection of performance enhancing drugs. Marcos Maynar and his brother Juan Ignacio Maynar are both experts in anabolic steroids and work at the university laboratory. They claim their blood and urine testing services and legally recognized analysis for biological passports were developed to generate a badly need source of revenue for the University. He strongly denies that he supports doping in cycling (“Spanish lab allegations and confessions in Tour doping,” July 20).
But Marcos Maynar Marino from the university, who sent the email, insisted in a statement that the offer was made to assist the teams to find dopers, not to support substance abuse.
‘We are not supporting doping but try to prevent team-members from doing something which could destroy the team,’ Maynar said.
Maynar’s credibility with regard to doping has been hurt by his alleged involvement in other doping scandals.
In June 2004, Maynar was implicated in a nationwide steroid bust called Operación Gamma II that shutdown a network of steroid distributors providing anabolic steroids to bodybuilders and athletes at gyms in various cities in Spain.
In May 2006, Maynar was found to share clients with Eufemiano Fuentes, the mastermind behind the Operación Puerto doping scandal.
In May 2008, Maynar was the team doctor for the Portueguese LA MSS team who authorities found guilty of systematic doping.
Maynar said he was surprised by the raid, insisting that the team always “presented normal levels.”
“My relationship with the team is merely as a collaborator. I only go to races to control the hematocrit levels of the cyclists and look after the nutritional part of the athletes,” Maynar was quoted as saying.
Hat tip to Cycling Fans Anonymous.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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