Eufemiano Fuentes was a man in demand. Before the 2006 Tour de France, the Spanish doctor could hardly resist requests from well-known professional cyclists. When he was arrested on 23 May 2006, he was in possession of a dozen mobile phones. Then the investigators struck, the police seized doping agents and more than 200 bags of blood and blood plasma in two laboratories. And Fuentes became the face of the biggest doping scandal in Spanish sporting history. From Monday, the 57-year-old will stand trial as the main defendant.
His methods were in demand among cyclists: Fuentes paid a lot of money to acquire a centrifuge and equipment that made it possible to freeze blood in a special process - or to "send it to Siberia", as it was called in internal jargon according to a newspaper report.
Fuentes had neatly labelled the blood bags, but not with the names of the athletes, but with code designations that the investigators were only able to decipher bit by bit. The discovery of the scandal brought more than 50 professional cyclists under suspicion of doping, including stars such as Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Tyler Hamilton.
"My job as a doctor is to protect the health of my patients," Fuentes justified himself in an interview with the radio station Cadena SER. "High-performance sport is not healthy because it overtaxes the human body. You have to resort to medication to repair the damage done."
After studying medicine, Fuentes specialised in gynaecology, but soon turned to sports medicine. He was initially interested in athletics, having been Spanish university champion in the 400 metre hurdles as a student. His wife Cristina Pérez, a successful sprinter, once tested positive for doping. However, the test was later declared invalid.
Fuentes came to cycling at the end of the 1980s. Due to the success of his protégés, he was soon courted by several professional teams. His method of transfusing autologous blood was innovative and the fight against doping was still in its infancy at the time.
After the doping scandal was uncovered, Fuentes retreated to his home island of Gran Canaria and practically disappeared from the public eye. There was speculation in the media as to whether the doctor had also counted footballers and professionals from other sports among his clients. Fuentes himself never revealed any names. "That's a professional secret," he once said.
The name Eufemiano Fuentes had already made headlines in Gran Canaria more than three decades ago. An uncle, who had the same name as the doctor and was a successful tobacco producer, was kidnapped and murdered in 1976.
