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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: Daniel Taschler

  • Taschlers, Ferrari Sentenced in High-Profile Biathlon Doping Case

    Taschlers, Ferrari Sentenced in High-Profile Biathlon Doping Case

    Gottlieb Taschler. (Photo: IBU)

    In the penultimate chapter of a doping story which began nearly two and a half years ago, Italian biathlon relay World Champion Gottlieb Taschler and his son Daniel, an IBU Cup-level competitor, were convicted by an Italian court. Doping is a criminal offense in Italy and Daniel Taschler was convicted of using illegal methods, while his father was convicted of assisting and concealing the activities.

    News first broke in late 2014 that the younger Taschler had been using the blood-boosting drug recombinant erythropoietin (EPO). He allegedly did so with the help of infamous “Doctor EPO” Michele Ferrari, a collaboration which was arranged by his father — who was then the Vice President for Sport of the International Biathlon Union (IBU), as well as the president of the Antholz-Anterselva World Cup Organizing Committee.

    “Police used phone taps to listen in on conversations between Dr. Ferrari and Taschler,” CyclingNews.com reports. “Prosecutors believe they included instructions on how to take EPO and details of secret telephone numbers where Dr. Ferrari could be contacted. Taschler had pushed his son to work with Dr. Ferrari as a way to boost his athletic career.”

    The elder Taschler stepped down from his IBU role after public pressure in December 2014, and the younger Taschler has not competed since then either.

    “I have been shocked by the recent media reports alleging that I have been involved in doping and, even worse, that I have helped to organize performance enhancing substances for my son Daniel. This is simply not true,” Gottlieb Taschler wrote in an IBU press release at the time.

    In 2016, the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) arbitration panel found that Daniel Taschler had doped between 2010 and 2011. Both Taschlers received bans from participating in sport through June 2018.

    A concurrent criminal case has also now been decided. Gottlieb Taschler was fined 4,000 Euros and Daniel 3,600, and they were sentenced to one year and to nine months of imprisonment, respectively, although the jail time was suspended. In both cases, the fines imposed by the judge were even heavier than those requested by state prosecutors.

    The senior Taschler will have an uphill battle if he wants to regain his biathlon jobs, as the court also banned him for life from taking on any roles with CONI or with the Italian Winter Sports Federation, FISI. The IBU will have to decide on his fate separately.

    The court also found Ferrari in violation, and fined him 4,500 Euros with 18 months of imprisonment, during which time he is not allowed to work as a doctor. Like the Taschlers, Ferrari saw his prison sentence suspended. He was also, however, ordered to pay a 15,000 Euro fine to the World Anti-Doping Agency.

    Ferrari has been implicated in many doping scandals, most visibly in cycling; he worked with disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong, among others. He is serving a lifetime ban against working with the Italian cycling federation. This is the first time he has been convicted of a crime since doping became a criminal offense in Italy in 2000.

    The Taschlers have said that they plan to appeal the decision.

  • IBU Executive and Son Indicted for Doping, Along with Cycling’s Doping Dr. Michele Ferrari

    IBU Executive and Son Indicted for Doping, Along with Cycling’s Doping Dr. Michele Ferrari

    At a hearing in Bolzano, Italy, on Thursday, International Biathlon Union (IBU) Vice President for Sport Gottlieb Taschler was indicted in a criminal investigation into doping, along with his son Daniel and Michele Ferrari, a doctor famous for working with cyclists like Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton, Alexander Vinokourov, Denis Menchov, Filippo Simeoni, and others.

    The elder Taschler is accused of recommending that his son, an Italian B-team biathlete at the time, receive doping assistance from Ferrari in the 2010/2011 season. The younger Taschler, now 28, is accused of obtaining and using recombinant erythropoietin (EPO) to try to make the World Cup team.

    Ferrari had already been banned for life for participating in doping activities by the Italian cycling federation, and also banned by the U.S. Antidoping Agency (USADA) after the Armstrong case.

    The investigation into the Taschlers had been going on secretly for several years already when the allegations were first released in December 2014. At the time, Taschler stated that he would no longer work on IBU matters until the situation was cleared.

    Now that he has been indicted, it is unclear whether his status as a member of the Executive Board has changed, or whether it will.

    Taschler, part of Italy’s bronze medal-winning relay at the 1988 Olympics, has served on the Executive Board since 2006 in various roles. He was re-elected to his current position in 2014, just months before the scandal broke.

    The family’s ties to doping may not end there. Besides Daniel Taschler, Gottlieb Taschler also has a daughter, Mirjam, who is married to Johannes Dürr. The Austrian cross-country skier was busted for blood doping in the middle of the 2014 Olympics.

    Dürr claimed in an interview last year that he had known the “wrong people” and obtained his drugs from someone from a former Yugoslav republic. To FasterSkier’s knowledge, this person’s identity was never discovered.

    But in February, police raided Dürr’s house, including computers and phone records. They were reportedly hoping to find evidence linking him to Ferrari, possibly through the Taschlers. Since Dürr was not indicted in the Bolzano court, it’s unclear what these efforts yielded.

    Also this week, Austrian skier Harald Wurm was provisionally suspended pending an investigation into blood doping. Wurm was first investigated by the police in September, and he was reportedly extremely close friends with Dürr.

    It is now confirmed that Wurm will not be able to compete in the opening World Cup races of the season, if at all. Austrian cross-country head coach Gerald Heigl stepped down from his position, although he denied any connection to Wurm’s alleged doping.

    The current case in Bolzano is truly a multi-generational affair, with Ferrari’s son Stefano also being investigated for managing the financial side of his father’s illicit drug sales, according to The Guardian.

    Michele Ferrari is being indicted for money laundering, illegal sales, and tax evasion with regards to the scheme. Daniel Taschler is being indicted for sport fraud, and Gottlieb Taschler for complicity in the fraud.

    In December, the Italian newspaper Gazzetta Dello Sport published a transcript of a wiretap from July 2010.

    According to a translation, here’s a conversation between the younger Taschler (Referred to as “DT” below) and the elder Ferrari (MF):

    MF: “You have not even begun? Well, then we’ll do a small program … you are at home?”

    DT: “Yes, I’m home.”

    MF: “Until?”

    DT: “Until the end of the month.”

    MF: “Ah, you’re always at home. Well! Take them when you get home, take them at home!”

    DT: “Yes.”

    MF: “One day yes, one day no, as we had said.”

    Ferrari then told Daniel Taschler to buy a different phone for future communication: “I’ll leave you another phone number, but you do not have to call yourself. You have to have another telephone, and not in the name you use just for that! You get another phone with another person who is neither you nor Gottlieb, who buys a phone … So now I will give you another number, which is a Swiss to be used only for that. It’s better if you do not call it though! ”

    In a separate conversation, reported by the site Salto.bz, Ferrari warned Daniel Taschler to be careful with something – the name of the drug or object was never mentioned:

    MF: “Hey, you know it’s better not to keep it at home? It is a criminal offense. You have no other place? Now it is already quite cold outside, so… the important thing is not [to freeze it]. I don’t know, hide it underground or under leaves. Be careful!…”

    DT: “No, I’ll keep it at home. Nothing is happening.”

    MF: “There is no place other than the refrigerator and the temperature is between zero and ten degrees?”

    DT: “No. I keep it at home.”

    MF: “Now that it’s cold, just- just do not freeze it, that does not go to ten below zero… the best would be between the leaves. I do not know if you have a cellar or shed, if it’s a woodshed is fine. You can leave it there.”

    In January, Gottlieb Taschler responded to a question about why he had been in contact with Ferrari by saying that he was calling about his son’s thyroid problem. He didn’t call because of Ferrari’s reputation, he explained, but because “I knew him at the time as a good doctor.”