(Vienna, AUT) - Former Austrian nordic skiing and biathlon coach Walter Mayer pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of providing several top athletes with banned substances between 2005 and 2009.
Mayer, 54, who was already implicated in a doping scandal involving Austrian biathletes at the 2006 Turin Olympics, made the plea at the beginning of his trial, and faces up to three years in prison if convicted.
The former coach apparently supplied top Austrian athletes with banned substances between 2005 and February 2009, and became liable to charges after an Austrian anti-doping law came into force in 2008.
A fellow defendant, named Karl Heinz R., testified on Monday how he had acted as a middle-man and obtained banned substances such as growth hormones and the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) for Mayer from a Vienna pharmacist.
The middle-man, the pharmacist and two other people have been charged alongside Mayer.
According to Karl Heinz R., the deliveries of EPO intensified in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Turin, which culminated in a raid on the Austrian team quarters where Italian police found used syringes, blood bags and performance-enhancing drugs.
The 2002 Olympic cross country skiing champion Christian Hoffmann -- suspected of blood-doping -- and former cross country world champion Alois Stadlober were allegedly among Mayer's clients, as well as biathlete Wolfgang Perner and cross country skiers Juergen Pinter and Roland Diethart -- with the latter three having received lifelong Olympic bans after the Turin debacle.
All five have been cited as witnesses in Mayer's trial, which is expected to continue until August 17.
Mayer's name already emerged in past doping scandals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and the Viennese laboratory Humanplasma, which has been accused of blood doping.
