Estonian Olympic ski star caught up in doping scandal now works for Ukraine team
Double Olympic cross-country skiing gold medalist Andrus Veerpalu is reportedly now working as a service technician for the Ukrainian biathlon team.
Veerpalu, 54, hit controversy in 2019 due to his links to a blood doping scandal which engulfed the Estonian national cross-country skiing team.
According to information obtained by ERR, he is now working for the Ukrainian team, taking care of the skis of both men and women skiers.
After the scandal broke at the 2019 world championships in Seefeld, Austria, the International Ski Federation (FIS) imposed a two-year ban on Veerpalu from participating in sport, which ended in September 2021.
The FIS had found that Veerpalu had violated anti-doping rules by helping to broker and conceal the use of prohibited substances. The Estonian appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but the appeal was not upheld.
Veerpalu, whose son Andreas was one of the skiers caught up in the blood doping incident, has not publicly commented on the issue.
He is currently at the cross country skiing season opener at Idre, Sweden, ERR reports.
Veerpalu won gold medal in the men's 15 km classical in Salt Lake City in 2002 and in Turin in 2006, He also won silver in men's 50 km classical at the 2002 games. He took world championship gold at the 30 km classical in Lahti, Finland, in 2001, repeating the feat eight years later in the 15 km classical in Liberec, the Czech Republic, and he won silver in the 50 km classical at the 1999 world championships in Ramsau, Austria.
He retired in 2011. Several months after Veerpalu's retirement it was announced that he had tested positive for HGH growth hormone, prompting the emergence of social media groups both in support of Veerpalu and critical of him. The FIS anti-doping commission found Veerpalu guilty and extended an existing ban to three years, but the CAS in 2013 acquitted him on a technicality, lifting the doping ban and ordering the FIS to pay a portion of his legal fees.
Blood doping involves extracting a quantity of an athlete's blood, keeping it in cold storage and reintroducing it into their bloodstream shortly before competing, giving performance-enhancing benefits. Its first reported use was by Finnish middle-distance runners at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and the practice was only subsequently banned.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Siim Boikov
