Key witness in the doping process: "I felt worthless"

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Ex-cross-country skier Johannes Dürr: "According to the motto: Now more than ever"

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Expa / dpa

Johannes Dürr is in a hurry on Wednesday morning.

In a gray coat and sneakers, the former Austrian cross-country skier hurries through the hall of the Munich II district court, up the stairs to hearing room 270, carrying a bag with flowers over his shoulder.

What he then has to say in the largest German doping criminal trial in the past 20 years is less flowery.

On the sixth day of the negotiations, Dürr provided information about the fraud system in competitive sports and the machinations of Erfurt physician Mark Schmidt, 42, for hours.

He has been in custody for almost 19 months.

On Tuesday he had a confession read out, but left many questions unanswered. 

That was one of the reasons why the Chamber in Munich had invited Dürr.

She hoped to gain further insights into the shadowy world of high-performance sports and wanted to know more about possible backers and involved athletes.

Caught with Epo in Sochi

As Schmidt's customer, Dürr had received blood treatments as well as growth hormones from the doctor before 2014.

At the Winter Olympics in Sochi, he was caught doping - with the blood accelerator Epo, a hormone that increases endurance. 

He was banned under sports law for two years, but a few months later he had Schmidt treated him again with his own blood.

"According to the motto: now more than ever," he says.

"Top sport was my life. Apart from my family, I had no other perspective."

Cheated?

The cross-country skier doesn't have other athletes.

Because they didn't do it any other way.

What Dürr describes to the court tells a lot about the mechanisms in top-class sport.

He didn't wake up one morning and decided, "I'll take Epo today," he says.

No, it was a process that ended with the realization that he would have no chance without doping. 

This is one of the reasons why he let Schmidt treat him with his own blood until autumn 2018, although he was already working on a doping confession with ARD.

The film was broadcast in early 2019. 

"I felt worthless"

“Isn't that a contradiction?” Asks the presiding judge Marion Tischler.

"Sure, a blatant contradiction," says Dürr.

"But I felt worthless. The 2019 World Cup was the only thing I could hold on to."

At the end of January 2020, he was sentenced to a suspended sentence by the Innsbruck Regional Court.

Dürr has nothing but good things to say about the physician Schmidt, who ordered his performance-enhancing preparations from the wholesaler.

Schmidt was "absolutely professional, not a botch," he said, "he trusted him one hundred percent."

Completely different than once with his former and now convicted trainer Walter Mayer, where blood bags were warmed up with the help of a hairdryer. 

What role Dürr may still play in Schmidt's doping network has not yet been fully clarified.

Yes, he bought a special refrigerator for Schmidt in Slovenia to store blood bags and paid for part of the more than 13,000 euros himself.

But to take over the doctor's blood doping business, as he and Schmidt had initially considered - that was "too hot" for him.

It was only important to him "that my source does not run dry".

Just a little fish?

Dürr paid Schmidt € 5,000 a year for the "complete package" of blood treatments and growth hormones.

Comparatively little, says Dürr, if you know the sums that athletes are said to have transferred to the Italian doctor Michele Ferrari: He heard of "30,000 euros upwards". 

A remark that should have pleased the defense lawyers of Mark Schmidt and his four co-defendants, but strengthens their argument that the Erfurt doctor was only a small fish in the business of organized sports fraud. 

The Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) may also have been very well informed about the widespread performance manipulation of its athletes.

This is suggested by hotel bills, which the presiding judge Marion Tischler has thrown on the wall via a slide projector.

These are receipts of rooms that the ÖSV had booked for some athletes before and during the Olympic Winter Games.

And where Dürr had stayed to get blood.

Then he flew straight back to Sochi. 

What the ÖSV actually knew about the doping practices of its own athletes, Dürr is no longer allowed to talk about since the association took him to court.

They agreed in a settlement.

Since then, the former winter sportsman Johannes Dürr has been wearing a muzzle. 

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