Cycling Cheats
The Spanish authorities have finally caught up with the doctor - Eufemiano Fuentes - behind the outrageous cheating that has been taking place for years in the cynical world of professional cycling.
Fuentes was sentenced to one year in prison by a Spanish Court and also banned from practising as a sports doctor for four years - although any right thinking person will be asking why this crook was not banned for life and locked up for a long time.
Because he's a dishonest criminal fraudster whose willingness to ignore the medical ethics of his profession has helped people win big prize money in top flight cycling events - by cheating others who were playing by the rules.
The corrupt doctor carried out blood transfusions on some of the world's top cyclists and Fuentes is only now being punished - seven years after police raided his Madrid laboratories and found dozens of bags of refrigerated and frozen blood - marked with code names for his many customers.
Many of the bags belonged to cyclists who had left blood with Fuentes so that they could be re-infused with it during races in order to improve their performance - including the Olympic-medal winner Tyler Hamilton.
The aim of the transfusion was to artificially improve a cyclist's performance by increasing their red blood cell count and - in addition - Fuentes supplied his clients with banned substances, including testosterone, insulin, and hormones.
The Spanish judge said that Fuentes had put the health of the cyclists at great risk - by increasing their chances of suffering from thrombosis, heart attacks, nausea and vomiting - as well as an increased risk of doing damage to their kidneys and brain.
But incredibly the judge refused to release the unused transfusion bags to sporting and other authorities so that the identities of others involved in the scandal could be tracked down and brought to justice.
Justice of a sort that is because Fuentes is unlikely to even set foot in prison - since sentences under two years are normally suspended in Spain.
