Former mountain biker and doping suspect Alberto Leon found dead

Spanish former mountain biker Alberto Leon, recently implicated in the Operacion Galgo doping investigation, has been found dead at his home at San Lorenzo de Escorial near Madrid in what police are treating as an apparent suicide.

The 37-year-old, who is believed to have hanged himself, was one of 14 people arrested under Operacion Galgo last month, suspected of supplying doping products to other sportsmen and women, with Spanish sports daily Marca reporting that police had found doping substances and bags of blood belonging to different athletes at his home.

Among other people arrested in the investigation are the long-distance runner Marta Dominguez, world champion at Berlin in 009 in the 3,000 metre steeplechase, and the sports doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, the man at the centre of the Operacion Puerto doping enquiry launched in 2006, in which Dominguez and Leon were also suspects.