Kyrö: skier Jari Isometsä was promised FIM 1 million to take fall for 2001 doping bust

Minister says cover-up for money would be shocking in the extreme; Norwegian expert scotches Matikainen-Kallström EPO allegations

Kari-Pekka Kyrö

Jari Isometsä

Stefan Wallin

Marjo Matikainen-Kallström

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The former head coach of Finland’s cross-country skiing team Kari-Pekka Kyrö has further stirred the pot over the presence of doping in the sport with revelations made to an MTV3 sports programme on Sunday.
      Kyrö claimed to the broadcaster that Jari Isometsä - the first Finnish skier to be exposed at the Lahti Nordic Sking World Championships in 2001 - would have been promised a million markka (roughly EUR 160,000) for taking the burden of scapegoat on his shoulders and keeping quiet about the matter.
     
According to Kyrö, he and the then cross-country skiing boss Antti Leppävuori had been putting together a document to this effect, known at the time as “the sauna contract”, and Kyrö charges that that the Finnish Ski Association’s then Chairman Paavo M. Petäjä and Managing Director Esa Klinga were aware of the paper.
      None of the parties would comment on the claims on Sunday. Isometsä could not be reached, as his wife Johanna would not pass the phone to her husband, since “this matter is a closed book as far as we are concerned”.
     
At the press conference immediately after his positive test, Isometsä announced he was solely responsible for what had happened.
      The plan of a possible seven-figure compensation for his silence went seriously awry when five other high-profile Finnish athletes tested positive in the next few days.
     
Minister for Sport Stefan Wallin (Swedish People’s Party) commented late on Sunday night on Kyrö’s claims.
      “The charge that the FSA would have tried to cover up the 2001 doping scandal in Lahti with money is an extremely serious one. I would regard it as shocking in the extreme if an association enjoying considerable state support were to have tried to paper over its cheating with money”, said Wallin.
      The minister also repeated the often-made demand that the then leadership of the FSA should step forward and tell the full truth about what happened in Lahti.
     
The present FSA Chairman Jaakko Holkeri described the current situation as “hellish”, as new and different claims keep rising to the surface.
      “These are questions of proof and one word against another, when these new claims come up”, said Holkeri, and he expressed the hope that anyone who had information on the subject would open up and clear the situation.
      Holkeri had no position within the FSA leadership during the World Championships in Lahti, which were a fiasco for Finland as six leading skiers received two-year bans for the use of a banned plasma expander.
     
On Saturday, Kyrö had repeated his earlier assertion that female skier Marjo Matikainen-Kallström, a multiple Olympic and World Championships medallist in the 1980s, had used the performance-enhancing hormone erythropoietin or EPO.
      On Sunday, Matikainen-Kallström - who has been a National Coalition Party MEP and MP since 1996 - received flanking support from a powerful champion of her honour.
      The Norwegian doping expert Ingard Lereim reported that in tests carried out intensively by the International Ski Federation (FIS) there were no indications, for example through raised haemoglobin levels, of Matikainen-Kallström’s having used EPO or any other form of blood doping.
      As with most successful skiers, Matikainen-Kallström was tested very thoroughly.
      Lereim, who was a long-time member of the FIS medical committee, noted that the Finnish skier had actually demanded that she be tested more rigorously than the norm in order to avoid later claims that she was "on something".


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finns numbed by shocking revelations of Finnish Ski Association (1.3.2001)
  MP Matikainen-Kallström calls for doping accusers to come forward (10.4.2008)
  Former skiing head coach to be charged with smuggling and fraud (21.11.2003)
  Finland´s Antidoping Agency rejects coach´s allegations (19.6.2008)
  Kyrö interview casts doubt on 1998 doping libel case (22.5.2008)
  Former ski coach Kyrö reported to be source in TV news story on doping (21.5.2008)

Links:
  2001 Lahti Doping Scandal (Wikipedia)

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