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This is what ex-Kelme rider Jesus Manzano told L’Equipe in June 2007. Does this explain how somebody could be tested a zillion times and always come up clean? I should point out that Manzano was sacked by Kelme when he was found with a woman in his room on the 2003 Vuelta! This could influence his views about his former employers.

I want to give you an example, something I’ve never spoken about except to the police up until now. It concerns one of the four Spanish Laboratories credited by the UCI. This laboratory who is in charge of sending the “UCI” vampires (doctors)to take the samples during the Vuelta and other races is the same lab that’s in charge of the doctor visits to the cyclists, they follow the cyclists and give them the stamp of approval on their licenses. The owner of this clinic, a renowned hemotologist, called Walter Viru, who is one of the doctors for Kelme to alert them the day before the uci vampires were coming to take the samples from the cyclist. And he did the same thing with Del Moral, the doctor for the U.S. Postal team and then Discovery, a good friend of his.

Walter Viru, the Peruvian former Kelme team doctor during  Alejandro Valverde’s time with the team is at the centre of the latest doping scandal.  Sadly Javier Ochoa is also implicated.

Brothers Javier and Ricardo Ochoa were Kelme riders in February 2001 when they were hit by a motor vehicle while training near Malaga. Ricardo did not survive and  Javier was for months in a coma and was left with brain damage.  In 2004 he took part in the Paralympics.  Another 2004 Olympic athlete under suspicion is race walker Paquillo Fernandez who took the silver medal. How does a race walker fund doping products? I am surprised they earn enough to buy a cup of tea after the race. Perhaps the most famous cyclist implicated is Jose Vicente Garcia Acosta, a luxury domestique of Alejandro Valverde at Caisse d’Epargne whose home has been searched but he has not been arrested or charged and it has not been suggested that any doping products were found.

The investigations of the Guardia Civil in to the illegal practices of the gang began in August when some people were caught in possession of EPO and growth hormone. The investigators were quickly on to Viru, a former assistant of Fuentes. He owns a diet clinic in Valencia . It was presumably convenient for his side line that his son is a pharmacist.