Banned Austrian athletes appeal doping sentences

Four Austrian athletes banned for life from the Olympics for doping are fighting their punishments.
VIENNA, Austria — Four Austrian athletes banned for life from the Olympics for doping are fighting their punishments.
    Six cross-country skiers and biathletes were banned last month by the International Olympic Committee for blood-doping violations at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino.
    Cross-country skiers Martin Tauber, Juergen Pinter, Johannes Eder and Roland Diethart, and biathletes Wolfgang Perner and Wolfgang Rottmann were found guilty of possessing doping substances and taking part in a conspiracy.
    Guenther Riess, a lawyer representing Tauber and Pinter, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he had appealed his clients’ sentences at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
    Josef Schmid, spokesman for the Austrian Ski Federation, confirmed recent Austrian media reports that Diethart and Eder also were planning to appeal this week.
    No information was available about Rottmann and Perner, who have since retired from the sport.
    “The charge by the IOC is only to have possessed a prohibited method,” Riess said. “To be in possession of a prohibited method you need to have all the materials, devices and substances to use such a method — and those were not found with these athletes.”
    Riess said his clients were tested more than five or six times during and after the Olympics, including on the day Italian police raided the athletes’ living quarters.
    “All these tests were negative, it’s undisputed,” he said.

— The Associated Press