Joe Duggan (Reporter)
ONE of world sport’s biggest doping cases could be scuppered if over 200 crucial blood samples are destroyed, Spanish authorities have warned.
Enrique Gomez Bastida, director of the Spanish Anti-Doping Agency (AEPSAD), said it would be a ‘hard blow’ if an appeal court ordered samples from the Operation Puerto case should be destroyed.
Bastida said: “It would be a hard blow because it’s important to send a clear message in the anti-doping struggle.
“It’s important that those implicated recognise the facts.”
In 2006, police seized over 200 bags of blood, marked with coded names, from doctor Eufemiano Fuentes’s – known as Dr Blood – Madrid office.
Fuentes was found to be doping some of cycling’s biggest names, including Spaniard Alejandro Valverde.
Fuentes was banned for a year, but despite Fuentes claiming he also worked with stars from tennis, football, boxing and athletics, in 2013 a Spanish judge ordered the blood samples to be destroyed rather than handed to anti-doping authorities.
Madrid’s Provincial Court is due to deliver its verdict on appeal against Judge Julia Patricia Santamari’s 2013 ruling.
I find it very coincidental that after a decade or more of Nadal being accused of doping, only now, after the operacion Puerto blood bags have been destroyed, does he start suing people?