Former Austrian cyclist Georg Preidler, implicated in the Aderlass affair, was sentenced to twelve months suspended prison sentence and a € 2,880 fine for aggravated professional sport fraud, the Innsbruck regional court announced on Wednesday 22nd of July.
Suspended for four years in 2019, Georg Preidler, 30, was found guilty of resorting to blood doping between March 2017 and March 2019, of using growth hormones and of deceiving his business partners as athletes , for damage assessed at 286,000 euros.
He had pleaded partially guilty, admitting to having doped from 2018, but denying having done so in 2017. He can appeal.
The extent of the damage and the duration of the offense were considered as aggravating elements, the absence of a criminal record and the partial confession of the accused as mitigating circumstances.
The Aderlass doping case (“Bleeding”, in German) involves more than twenty athletes from different European countries, according to German investigators.
Georg Preidler was the first sportsman to be sentenced, along with Stefan Denifl – another Austrian cyclist – to a four-year suspension following a huge scandal that erupted at the start of 2019, on the sidelines of the championships of the Nordic ski world in Seefeld (Austria).
Former Austrian long-distance and biathlon coach Walter Mayer was sentenced at the beginning of July to fifteen months suspended prison sentence for supplying doping products.
