April 01, 2011 (Finland) – The 2001 Finnish Doping Scandal from the World Cross Country ski championships is in the news again this week with a new trial and new allegations in the Finnish press. It has now been alleged that one of the skiers who was caught for doping – Jari Isometsa was offered 1 million Finnish marks to take on all the blame for this doping scandal.

This is just the latest episode in a scandal that has tarnished Finnish cross-country ski results for the last 20 years. This story could form the basis of a great soap opera script if it wasn’t so sad. To try to figure out what is happening it is a good idea to take a look at the time lines involved in this scandal and the main characters.

In 2001 Jari Isometsa was caught for using a banned substance – blood volume expanders (a substance used to hide the use of EPO) after one of the individual races at the World Championships in Lahti. At the time he said that he had acted alone. After further testing of other skiers on the Finnish team, five other skiers – Harri Kirvesniemi, Janne Immonen, Myka Myllyla, Milla Jauho and Virpi Kuitunen also tested positive for the same substance. All of the skiers were stripped of their medals and given suspensions. (Virpi Kuitunen came back a few years later and won the overall World Cup).

The head coach of the team at the time Kari-Pekka Kyro was directly implicated and also suspended. Other coaches and team personnel and administrators including Anti Leppavouri, Jari Piiranen and Pekka Vahasoyrinki were also implicated but their roles were never proved.

In 1998 the Finnish news agency FNB was convicted of libel for stories that they distributed implicating these three administrators.

The new trial that is starting now is to try Leppavouri, Piiranen, Vahasoyrinki and Rasanen for perjury during the 1998 libel trial.

Already there have been some startling admissions and allegations. Mika Myllyla has already admitted to using EPO. Kyro, the coach of the 2001 team has also re-surfaced claiming that the Finnish team was doping in 1997 in Trondheim for the World championships and in 1998 for the Olympics in Nagano. He is reported to have said that another skier, Jari Rasanen, had to be “drained of blood” before the World Championships in Trondheim because it was the only way to lower his sky-high haemoglobin and hematocrit levels because of abuse of EPO.

Kyro claims that all three team leaders knew of the extensive drug use and that he received a bag of EPO and growth hormone from Vahasoyrinki. Rasanen has stated that Kiro is just out for revenge and that the allegations are not true.

The trial is expected to last until June and several witnesses including Harri Kirvesniemi and doping researcher Tapio Videman are expected to testify.

While some of you may believe that they don’t care anymore about something that happened 10 years ago, this scandal in 1991 changed cross-country skiing and leveled the playing field for all North American skiers.

Prior to this case, while there had been a few isolated doping cases, there had never been such widespread publicity in cross-country skiing for doping. It showed the world that there was a doping problem in the sport and that something needed to be done to clean up the sport.

The impetus from this case carried over to 2002 and Salt Lake City where Johan Mulhegg (GER) and Russians Larissa Lazutina and Olga Danilova were also stripped of medals after positive doping tests. It carries over even today with the positive tests from Russian skiers and others in the past few years.

It also proved that skiers like Beckie Scott and Sara Renner and coaches like Marty Hall were not crying wolf when they protested against doping.

The fight against doping continues in cross-country skiing as well as all other sports. The more publicity that there is for doping cases like this the better, as far as I am concerned. The general public needs to know the truth about what is happening. And the young skiers need to know that if they train hard that there is a chance to be one of the best in the world.

I couldn’t say that in the 1980s and 1990s when I was coaching the National team because we knew that doping was rampant in the sport, but we had no proof. Now the proof is out there, and the IOC, FIS and WADA are serious about cleaning up the sport.

There is no better time to be a young skier than right now. Sure there is still doping in cross country skiing, but much less than in the past. More and more skiers are getting caught. That is not a bad thing for the sport, but a good thing. It is much better than before 2001 when the sport governing bodies hid their heads in the sand.

Read more in Langd.se HERE.
Read more in Langrenn.com HERE.