This is another police raid. The Tour de France has not yet started and the Bahrain-Victorious team is already collecting adventures. Not the stage victories or the abandonment of runners but the police searches. This Thursday morning, on the eve of the big departure in Copenhagen, the hotel occupied by the Bahraini team was searched by the Danish police. A new descent which comes three days after previous searches, as part of a French investigation into suspicions of doping.
Like Monday, it is the team itself which reveals this police operation by means of a press release. “The hotel of the Bahrain-Victorious team was searched by the Danish police, at the request of the French prosecutor’s office, this morning at 5.30 a.m.”, announces Bahraini formation. “The officers searched all the team vehicles, all the rooms of the riders and the members of the management. The team responded to all inquiries from officers and the search ended two hours after it began. No items were seized.”
This new police raid comes three days after searches were carried out at the homes of various runners and staff members of Bahrain Victorious. According to the Spanish site Ciclo21, they were carried out by Europol, the European criminal police agency, in Slovenia, Poland and Spain and notably targeted the general manager of the team, Milan Erzen, but also the doctor Polish Piotr Kosielski and the French physiotherapist Barnabé Moulin. searches that “are a continuation of the investigation process that began during the team’s performances in the Tour de France last year”the Bahrain-Victorious team wrote in a statement on Monday.
“We sleep like babies and work like horses”
On July 15, on the eve of the 18th stage of the Tour de France, the training had seen its hotel searched in Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). This search had been carried out by the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Damage to the Environment and Public Health (Oclaesp), as part of a preliminary investigation opened twelve days earlier by the Marseille prosecutor’s office. “counts of acquisition, transport, possession, importation of a prohibited substance or method for the purpose of use by an athlete without medical justification”. Contacted by Releasethe Marseille public prosecutor’s office did not respond to our requests.
Following the search carried out in Pau during the last week of the Tour de France 2021, leaks had revealed last October that traces of tizanidine, a powerful muscle relaxant used against multiple sclerosis (but not prohibited by anti-doping regulations), had been found in the hair analyzes of several runners. The Bahraini team had denied being informed and the laboratory had not confirmed the identities. This year, the Slovenian Matej Mohoric, the Belgian Dylan Teuns, the Briton Fred Wright and the Australian Jack Haig, who had abandoned well before Pau, are the only riders of the formation planned for the Tour 2022, already present during the previous edition.
Questioned on Wednesday by the VeloNews site, Vladimir Miholjevic, the performance manager of the Bahrain-Victorious team, assured that “the searches went well” and the team was “more confident than ever”. To illustrate that his training was as serene as it was focused on the race, Miholjevic had this amazing formula: “we sleep like babies and work like horses”. Waking up at 5:30 a.m. is indeed the lot of some infants.