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Saiz released; Four others remain in custody

By The Associated Press
Published: May. 24, 2006

Madrid, Spain (AP) - Liberty Seguros cycling team director Manolo Saiz, arrested on doping charges, was released Wednesday after being questioned by police, the Civil Guard said.

Saiz will still have to go before a judge. Four other men arrested along with Saiz, one of the biggest names in Spanish cycling, remain in custody. They still have to be questioned by the Civil Guard, a paramilitary police unit of the Interior Ministry.

It was not clear when Saiz would go before a judge.

The other four detainees include Eufemiano Fuentes, a physician who has worked for several Spanish cycling teams, the Civil Guard said.

Spanish newspapers reported that Saiz and the other detainees were arrested for allegedly helping riders engage in blood doping, drawing oxygen-rich blood at high altitudes to then obtain a concentrate of red blood cells. These are injected back into the riders before a race to boost endurance.

The newspaper El Pais said police who made the arrests and searched apartments and a clinic found more than 200 bags of blood with coded labels indicating who should get the blood.

Some samples were frozen but others were liquid, and as the blood samples have a short shelf life, investigators said some might have been destined riders for in the Giro d'Italia, El Pais said.

The case is the last in a series of trouble for Liberty Seguros.

In February, Roberto Heras was banned for two years after testing positive for EPO at last year's Vuelta a Espana, which he won, and stripped of his title. He was eventually fired from the team. The rider has always insisted that he is innocent and attributed the positive test to an error.

Before he managed Liberty Seguros, Saiz directed the Spanish cycling team ONCE.