Mayer released, Kohl’s manager remains jailed
- By VeloNews.com
- Published Apr. 30, 2009
Austria’s former national Nordic ski coach Walter Mayer was released on Thursday after spending more than a month in custody, on suspicion of dealing in doping substances, court sources said.
The 52-year-old Mayer was arrested on March 22, suspected of obtaining and
providing illegal doping substances, including the banned blood booster EPO and its modern successor CERA, according to the prosecution.
He was remanded into custody on March 25.
In a massive anti-doping clean-up last month, Austrian authorities also arrested a cyclist, Christof Kerschbaum, and a Vienna pharmacist believed to
have supplied Mayer and Kerschbaum with banned substances.
Kerschbaum has since been released.
Stefan Matschiner, the former manager of Austrian cyclist and doping offender Bernard Kohl, meanwhile remains in custody.
A presumed big fish in the Austrian doping world, Matschiner was arrested on March 30, after banned Austrian triathlete Lisa Huetthaler, 25, named him as one of her main suppliers of EPO in an interview.
Kohl also revealed later that Matschiner had supplied him with doping substances.
Authorities were also investigating Andreas Zoubek, a doctor at a Vienna children’s hospital, suspected of providing EPO to Huetthaler and other athletes.
Mayer, a former coach to the Austrian national nordic ski team, was already implicated in a doping scandal at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, involving
the Austrian biathlon and cross-country squads.