Former Armstrong doctor provided drugs to Spanish team

MADRID: Spain’s Olympic track cycling team from Atlanta 1996 was supplied banned substances by Lance Armstrong’s disgraced former doctor Michele Ferrari, El Pais newspaper reported on Tuesday.

According to a 2016 testimony, seen by El Pais, from Spanish doctor Luis Garcia del Moral, the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) took part in a doping programme between 1993 and 1998.Del Moral, who was the track cycling team’s medical manager at the time, told the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2016 that Ferrari had provided banned doping products.

Asked if Ferrari supplied Spanish track cyclists with corticosteroids during this period, Del Moral replied: “That was not the main thing. The main thing was EPO and growth hormones.”

El Pais said Del Moral supported his claim with a spreadsheet dated July 15, 1996 — four days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics.The document registered 12,866,729 pesetas, around 80,000 euros, being reimbursed to Ferrari by the RFEC, and 6,195,245 pesetas, around 36,000 euros, declared as expenses spent in a pharmacy.

Del Moral’s testimony was made during an appeal case regarding Johan Bruyneel, the former sporting director of Armstrong’s US Postal Service team, who was handed a 10-year suspension by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in 2014.