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Skier Lindsey Vonn, Olympic star, saw notorious doping doctor in Germany at Red Bull clinic
Champion skier Lindsey Vonn trains at the Red Bull center and sees notorious drug doctor Bernd Pansold (r.), who spends time in jail for his involvement in doping female German athletes with muscle-building drugs without their knowledge.
THALGAU, Austria — Red Bull spares little expense for its favorite sponsored athlete, the fearless American ski racer Lindsey Vonn , girlfriend of Tiger Woods and face of the U.S. Olympic team for next winter’s Sochi Games in Russia.
Each summer the Austrian energy drink company organizes a rigorous conditioning program for Vonn, lodging her at an opulent resort hotel near Innsbruck and letting her work out at the Red Bull pro soccer team’s sparkling training facility near the Salzburg airport.
Then there is Thalgau, a peaceful village on the eastern outskirts of Salzburg, where Red Bull has sent Vonn to its Diagnostics and Training Center, a secure and nondescript old tin-oxide factory that houses a state-of-the-art sports laboratory overseen by a 71-year-old German doctor named Bernd Pansold.
It is there that America’s marquee Olympic star has visited the clinic of the East German doping doctor who played an instrumental role in the German Democratic Republic’s notorious, state-sponsored program to dope unwitting young athletes with hardcore anabolic steroids. Thousands of young athletes were victimized, many suffering ghastly, permanent injuries in what have been described as crimes against humanity.
A Daily News investigation of Red Bull’s Thalgau operation has uncovered no evidence of doping by Vonn, who has never failed a drug test. But the mere fact of Vonn’s and Pansold’s mutual access shows how vulnerable today’s Olympic athletes are when the corporate sponsors supplying their income are accountable only to the bottom line.
THALGAU, Austria — Red Bull spares little expense for its favorite sponsored athlete, the fearless American ski racer Lindsey Vonn , girlfriend of Tiger Woods and face of the U.S. Olympic team for next winter’s Sochi Games in Russia.
Each summer the Austrian energy drink company organizes a rigorous conditioning program for Vonn, lodging her at an opulent resort hotel near Innsbruck and letting her work out at the Red Bull pro soccer team’s sparkling training facility near the Salzburg airport.
Then there is Thalgau, a peaceful village on the eastern outskirts of Salzburg, where Red Bull has sent Vonn to its Diagnostics and Training Center, a secure and nondescript old tin-oxide factory that houses a state-of-the-art sports laboratory overseen by a 71-year-old German doctor named Bernd Pansold.
It is there that America’s marquee Olympic star has visited the clinic of the East German doping doctor who played an instrumental role in the German Democratic Republic’s notorious, state-sponsored program to dope unwitting young athletes with hardcore anabolic steroids. Thousands of young athletes were victimized, many suffering ghastly, permanent injuries in what have been described as crimes against humanity.
A Daily News investigation of Red Bull’s Thalgau operation has uncovered no evidence of doping by Vonn, who has never failed a drug test. But the mere fact of Vonn’s and Pansold’s mutual access shows how vulnerable today’s Olympic athletes are when the corporate sponsors supplying their income are accountable only to the bottom line.
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/
