Domínguez believed to be linked to Puerto doping case

Operation Puerto, a 2006 Civil Guard investigation into a doping ring based out of Madrid, left the door ajar for last week's Operation Greyhound, some of the main protagonists of which are linked to both scandals. It has now emerged that one of the primary reasons a judge in the capital, Mercedes Pérez Barrios, authorized the wiretaps and surveillance that preceded Greyhound was a bag of blood found during Puerto that was not identified at the time, but which is believed to belong to Marta Domínguez.

The Central Operative Unit officers that launched Greyhound reached this conclusion after lengthy analysis of documents seized from Eufemanio Fuentes during the 2006 operation. Fuentes, a sports medic accused of running Puerto out of his Madrid clinic, is also one of the key suspects in Greyhound.

Operation Puerto documents contained the runner's cellphone number

In one of the documents, which identifies the athlete receiving a program of doping by a codified name, Domínguez's cellphone number is also present. Associated with the paperwork was a bag of blood that carried the same codified name on an identifying label; investigators believe this blood bag corresponds to Domínguez.

Judge Pérez Barrios, who is overseeing Operation Greyhound, will hear Domínguez's declarations in due course - the judge has been on sick leave - and she may choose to call the athlete to Madrid rather than permit a video conference from Domínguez's hometown, Palencia, due to the seriousness of the allegations.

The other seven suspects detained in the operation - Fuentes, Manuel Pascua, César Pérez, Alberto León, José Alonso Valero, María José Martínez and Alberto García, who all face charges of crimes against public health - gave testimony to the judge substituting Pérez Barrios in the capital.

Aside from being the principal driver of the initial investigation, the attribution of the blood bag to Domínguez, who won the 5,000m European title in Gothenburg a few months after the Puerto scandal broke, also leaves question marks hanging over her achievements on the track.

In a statement released on Monday, Domínguez vehemently denied supplying other athletes with doping substances and also refuted claims that the Civil Guard had found prohibited products in her home. However, she fell short of affirming that she had never taken performance-enhancing drugs herself.

That Fuentes was working with Domínguez was confirmed recently by her former coach, Mariano Díez. Shortly before the Beijing Olympics, Domínguez appointed César Pérez. Díez later revealed that Domínguez had told him years before that she had been in a working relationship with Fuentes since at least 2003.

"When I asked her, at the same time that Puerto broke in 2006, whether she was worried if she was implicated, she replied: 'Don't worry, Mariano. Nothing is going to happen to me'," Díez said on a radio program last week.

Fuentes, who in addition to his involvement in Operation Greyhound, is awaiting a court appearance over his links to Puerto, returned to work on Monday as a family doctor at a Canary Islands public health center. He flew back to the Canaries on Sunday after being arrested on an airplane a couple of hours after his Las Palmas apartment had been searched by the Civil Guard.

Meanwhile, investigators are waiting for the results from several laboratories studying the substances uncovered at 15 separate addresses last Thursday when Greyhound sprang from the traps.