Frenchman Bernard Sainz, known as “Doctor Mabuse”, received a new sentence on Monday for inciting doping, this time one year in prison at home, a sentence that the condemned lawyer announced that he will appeal.
Sainz, 78, who considers himself a homeopath, has a long history of convictions for incitement and aiding the use of prohibited substancess in sport and illegal practice of medicine.
The former member of the Mercier team, whose nickname “Doctor Mabuse” alludes to the Machiavellian character popularized by the master of expressionist cinema Fritz Lang, adds two other prison sentences in France, one of two years in 2014 and another of one year in 2019, mainly for cases related to professional and amateur cycling in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The false doctor, who received large sums for his advice, came to collaborate with cyclists such as the ill-fated Belgian Frank Vandenbroucke (died in 2009 at the age of 34 from a stroke), in whose home the police found doping products in the early 2000s.
Also with promising runners, such as the French Fabien Taillefer, who was arrested in 2011 along with other cyclists implicated for having resorted to corticosteroids in 2009 and then to EPO.