Berlin (AFP)

German doctor Mark Schmidt, suspected of being the thinker of a vast international blood doping network dismantled in February 2019, as part of the "Aderlass" operation, is on trial from Wednesday in Munich (south) with four of his accomplices.

The defendants risk, according to German law, between one and ten years in prison.

"We are not here in the presence of an athlete who dope in his corner, but of a doping company (...) whose goal is to make money", insists the lawyer Michael Lehner, "In a drug trafficking trial, no one would be surprised to risk such penalties. I see no difference."

Dr Schmidt, 42, has been in preventive detention for 16 months.

According to the indictment, he has helped athletes to dope "at least since the end of 2011", in "a number of cases still unknown".

Thirty witnesses must testify and the judgment is expected before Christmas.

Doping experts are wondering about the revelations that could come out of this trial.

Can famous athletes suddenly be involved?

The list of events affected is in any case impressive: according to justice, Mark Schmidt doped athletes during the Winter 2014 and 2018 and Summer 2016 Olympic Games, but also on the Tour de France 2018, the Giro 2016 and 2018 and the 2017 Vuelta, not to mention the 2017 and 2019 Nordic Ski Worlds.

- Clandestine laboratory -

So far, 23 athletes from eight nations have been identified, cyclists and winter sports athletes.

Several Austrian athletes and a coach have already been sentenced to suspended prison sentences by the courts of their country, including Johannes Dürr (15 months suspended), the cross-country skier whose revelations had allowed the Austrian and German police to launch Operation "Aderlass" (bleeding in German).

A number of cyclists and cross-country skiers have also been sanctioned by sports authorities.

The case came to the fore on February 27, 2019, when Austrian police raided the site of the Nordic Skiing World Championships in Austrian Tyrol.

Five athletes were arrested on the spot.

Simultaneously, Mark Schmidt, conductor of the network at the head of a clandestine laboratory, was arrested by the German police in Erfurt (center).

"The investigation has already shown that it was a global doping company, organized and set up for years by the main accused," notes the boss of the German anti-doping agency (NADA) Lars Mortsiefer.

- The Slovenian track -

"He must come out of this trial more than what we already know", wants to believe Michael Lehner, who was the lawyer of Johannes Dürr, in an interview with the sports agency SID, German subsidiary of AFP: "I hopes a statement from (Mark Schmidt) that would teach us a lot. There are probably a lot more athletes involved. "

Prosecutor Kai Gräber, who investigated and seized dozens of blood bags, however tempered the hopes of sensational confessions at trial: "I do not believe that information likely to shake the sport of cycling will come out. The facts are already very widely known ", he tempers.

In the middle of the Tour de France, dominated by the Slovenes Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogacar, revelations about cycling would obviously give the trial exceptional publicity.

One of the sons of the case indeed leads to Slovenia, where several riders were suspended in 2019 because of their involvement in the doping network, and where Milan Erzen, a central figure in Slovenian cycling, is suspected of having done business with Mark Schmidt.

© 2020 AFP