Doping: Ex-cross-country skier Baldauf sentenced to 5 months in prison

The 27-year-old from Vorarlberg had pleaded guilty before the jury. He admitted to taking growth hormones and to blood doping. The verdict was not legally binding for the time being.

He had his blood drawn for the first time in April 1, Baldauf said during the trial. He added that he took growth hormone starting in the fall of 2016, but not particularly frequently. He knew that doping was banned. It was never about money for him. “I wanted to show my potential at the home World Cup in Seefeld,” asserted the defendant.

Johannes Dürr introduced him to doping. “Dürr told me what it’s like in top-level sport. He told me what he had done and that there was a German doctor. But he never said that I should do that too,” said Baldauf. According to the Vorarlberg native, he got the contact details for the German sports doctor Mark S. from Dürr.

The public prosecutor accused the former cross-country skier of committing sports fraud by pretending to perform without doping and thereby deceiving his sponsors. “The question that needs to be clarified today is whether damage was caused,” said the public prosecutor. From the perspective of the prosecution, the answer to this question is “yes” because the sponsors would not have provided any money if they had known about the doping.

Naturally, the defender saw this completely differently. According to him, the contract with the sponsors has been fulfilled. “Because he was supposed to cross-country ski and that’s exactly what he did,” said defender Andreas Mauhart. In addition, employees of both the ÖSV and the ski company knew about doping. There was no deception and “they cannot be the injured parties,” emphasized Mauhart. The lawyer asked for a diversion.

Baldauf claimed in court that he had never enriched himself through doping. “I didn’t get a penny or ski anymore because of the doping,” said Baldauf. Because he was already in the A squad before he started doping.

Public prosecutor Dieter Albert spoke of an “entire system of professional sports fraud the likes of which we have never had before in Austria and Germany”. Those involved had been in contact for years using prepaid cell phones.

The defense attorney emphasized that what his client had earned through sport was less than what he had spent on doping. This alone shows that he never doped for the money, but that he was only interested in the honor at the home World Cup: “The bottom line is that my client is much more a victim than a perpetrator.”

Soon the authorities were in the course of the so-called “Operation Bloodletting” caught the net at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Seefeld. This is an investigation into an international blood doping affair that was exposed in February 2019 during the Nordic World Cup in Seefeld and in Germany. The list of athletes allegedly involved in the blood doping scandal involving German doctor Mark S. is said to contain 21 names.

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Doping: Ex-cross-country skier Baldauf sentenced to 5 months in prison

Former cross-country skier Dominik Baldauf was sentenced to five months in conditional imprisonment at the Innsbruck regional court on Tuesday for serious sports fraud.

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