Two different major doping investigations, separated by more than a decade, came to a close this month with two diametrically opposed endings. In the recent "Operation Aderlass" and the 2006 "Operacion Puerto," life-saving blood transfusion techniques were subverted by doping doctors for sports fraud.

In Munich, Germany, prosecutors are demanding a five-year, six-month prison sentence and a five-year ban from professional activities for Mark Schmidt, the doctor behind a massive blood doping operation involving Nordic skiers and numerous professional cyclists in Austria and Germany.

In Madrid, Spain, Eufemiano Fuentes is seeking to recover personal belongings seized as part of Operacion Puerto in 2006, including machines that helped process and freeze the athletes' blood, the final He refused to appear at the appointed time during the phase.

Schmidt admitted to helping athletes blood dope since 2012, taking a page from Fuentes' playbook. He claims that by offering his professional services, he wanted to help athletes and prevent them from hurting themselves.

He and his assistants helped athletes withdraw, store, and reinfuse their own blood for performance-enhancing purposes; at the 2019 World Championships, cross-country skier Max Haucke was caught during a blood transfusion.

After an investigation, six skiers, plus Georg Preidler, Stefan Denifl, Kristijan Koren, Borut Bozic, Kristijan Dulasek, Alessandro Petacchi, and mountain biker Kristina Kolman-Forstner were swiftly to be sanctioned.

Hermann Lamm, chairman of the Dutch doping authority, told NRC.nl that the sports authorities would have had a hard time tackling such a big case.

"When doping networks are so large and organized across borders, sports associations are often unable to tackle them. As Germany and Austria have shown in this matter, it is left to the police and the judiciary. In that respect, this case is unique," Lam said.

In 2006, doping was not a crime in Spain, a fact that hamstrung prosecutors and anti-doping agencies in the Operacion Puerto case.

Several athletes, such as Ivan Basso, Michele Scarponi, Tyler Hamilton, Jörg Jakusch, and Thomas Dekker, confessed to being Fuentes' clients, and Jan Ulrich and Alejandro Valverde confessed to having blood seized through DNA fingerprinting that was The evidence was linked to evidence, but the case dragged on past the statute of limitations for the other 30 suspected customers.

Unlike Operation Adelrás, in Operación Puerto, the players received all the punishment while Fuentes was set free.

According to El País, Fuentes was given an ACP 215 hemonetic machine used to process blood for transfusions, a cell phone, a suitcase with documents, an appointment book, a water heater, a blood bag sealer, a toiletry case with 100 syringes, a portable refrigerator, notepaper, 10 keys and three key chains containing controls for two garages, and refused to go to Madrid to retrieve other personal belongings.

The investigation of Operacion Puerto lasted seven years and Fuentes' trial ended after three months, but his 2013 sentence of one year in prison for crimes against public health (the only charge available to the prosecution) was overturned on appeal in 2016. The evidence was turned over to WADA and the UCI, but the agencies were barred from using it to raise new anti-doping rule violations.

The anecdote of Adelas' testimony was as ridiculous as Manolo Saiz being caught with a briefcase full of cash as a member of Operacion Puerto. While the athletes jumped from the bushes into a mobile vehicle to receive their blood transfusions, the nurses slowly rolled down the quiet streets and drove to the site of the important skiing competition. Stored blood injected before the athletes arrived in South Korea for the 2018 Winter Games was pulled out again to avoid being checked for questionable equipment at the airport and re-injected just before the competition.

And now Hauke told "Expressen" magazine to help WADA improve its investigations to root out more doping conspiracies: "You can't dope without doctors. We must hunt the doctors."

Schmidt is scheduled to be sentenced on March 15.