ATHLETICS: French police were yesterday analysing medical products found in a car belonging to Romanian Olympic 5,000 metres champion Gabriela Szabo.
Border police stopped the car during a routine control on the motorway at La Turbie, a village overlooking Monaco, on Friday and seized the substances.
They arrested a Romanian citizen, Daniel Vlad, who was driving Szabo's car to the Pyrenees resort of Font-Romeu, near Spain, where a group of 21 Romanian athletes are training at altitude.
A border police spokesman said the performance-enhancing drug actovegin, a derivative of calf serum used to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood, had been found.
"But the boxes and pamphlets are in Romanian or German and we cannot tell whether they are doping substances," he said.
The prosecutor's office in Nice has launched an investigation, and Vlad was interrogated by the police but was "very vague", the spokesman said, adding that the Romanian should at least have declared the substances.
Vlad said the products were not for his personal consumption, but police said there was no evidence that the products were for Szabo.
Coach Zsolt Gyongyossy, in Font-Romeu with the Romanian team, said on Tuesday that the Olympic gold medal winner, who beat Sonia O'Sullivan into second place in Sydney, was in Amsterdam when the incident with her car occurred. She was upset and did not train on Tuesday, he added.
Romanian team doctor Mioara Gonea, who is in Bucharest, said she had sent various drugs to Font-Romeu, where the country's squad are preparing for the world championships in Paris in August, but actovegin was not among them.
"As Gabriela's car was going to France I used that opportunity to send some effort-sustaining drugs for Romanian athletes, but not actovegin," Gonea said.
Romanian athletes and coaches in Font-Romeu said French police had checked the team's hotel, but police denied the claim, saying they would search the training camp only if the substances found in the car proved to be illegal.
Vlad's arrest is reminiscent of the Rumsas case after last year's Tour de France.
Edita Rumsas, the wife of Lithuanian rider Raimondas Rumsas, who finished on the Tour podium, was arrested with banned products in her car. She remained in custody for three months, but French police were unable to prove the substances were meant for her husband.
Actovegin also made headlines in France two years ago when journalists found boxes of the drug in rubbish bags allegedly belonging to staff of Lance Armstrong's US Postal team on the 2000 Tour de France. The team were cleared.
