The former cycling director Vicente Belda and his son, investigated after the dismantling of a doping plot

Vicente Belda, in December 2019. CLAUDIO ÁLVAREZ

Vicente Belda Vicedo, historic ex-cyclist and former director of Spanish cycling at the head of Kelme whose career was stopped due to his involvement in Operation Puerto against doping, is one of the eight people investigated after the dismantling of a criminal group in May by the Civil Guard Supposedly dedicated to drug trafficking and doping in sports, allegedly led from the University of Extremadura (UNEX) by Dr. Marcos Maynar, a long-time sports doctor known to the anti-doping authorities.

A son of Belda, Vicente Belda García, a masseur in the Astana team, is also among those investigated in the so-called Operation Ilex, carried out by the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, directed from the Investigating Court 4 of Caceres.

Both Belda father and Belda son, the investigators attribute the alleged role of commercials and distributors of the Maynar group.

During the operation, last September, after the Tour of Spain, the Civil Guard summoned the Colombian cyclist Miguel Ángel

López, who did not attend the appointment because she was in a hurry to return to Colombia to meet her second son, born during the race.

Throughout his career, López has maintained a very close relationship with Belda.

In police investigations, athletes considered witnesses in doping substance trafficking investigations are usually the recipients of some of the intercepted shipments, such as one of menotropin, a luteinizing hormone included in the list of doping substances, which arrived in Budapest just in May, before the start of a Giro that López, one of the favourites, surprisingly abandoned as soon as the fourth stage began, on the way to Mount Etna, already in Sicily.

Also included among those investigated as another of the alleged customer recruiters is the ex-cyclist from Gipuzkoa Ángel Vázquez Iglesias,

Known above all for being suspended in perpetuity for doping and because the Civil Guard had to pursue him to arrest him in the middle of the 2014 Quebrantahuesos march in which he participated despite being sanctioned.

In his record is the victory in three Bearded Vultures.

Among the clients in the plot, apart from cyclists, is the coach of a swimming club in Castellón and one of the swimmers, a minor, as well as soccer players from a regional category team from Extremadura.

In a press release, the Civil Guard indicates that it has obtained the identification of all the alleged members of the criminal group months after the arrest of Maynar and his assistant in Cáceres "for the commission of alleged crimes of drug trafficking and doping in sport, belonging to a criminal group and money laundering" after two registrations, one in Plasencia (Cáceres) and another in the Faculty of Sports Sciences of UNEX.

In addition, six more people are listed as investigated.

Image provided by the Civil Guard of the registry in the UNEX.

The components of the criminal group, underlines the Civil Guard, were also engaged in the production and distribution of substances prohibited in sport.

To the athletes that his network captured, Maynar offered training preparation, nutritional supplementation, and the supply for the consumption of drugs and substances prohibited in sport.

These athletes, who paid an annual fee of about 3,000 euros, were subjected to a preliminary study through analyzes and stress tests carried out at the facilities of the Faculty of Sports Sciences of Extremadura, where Maynar works as a teacher.

In the records of May, the Civil Guard highlights, various drugs not authorized in Spain were seized, such as Actovegin, Dichloroacetic Acid (DCA) and Theophylline of Lithuanian origin, as well as substances prohibited in sport such as the hormone menotropin, "in addition to other provided to athletes as caffeine in an injectable or suppository presentation and a large number of empty capsules prepared to be filled with any of these medications for subsequent distribution”.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on