Former Austrian national biathlon coach Walter Mayer, at the centre of a 2006 Winter Olympics doping scandal, has been arrested on doping charges.

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Mayer was arrested on suspicion of distributing to athletes the blood-booster EPO and related drugs which he purchased from a Vienna pharmacist, who was also arrested over the weekend, Vienna state prosecutor Gerhard Jarosch said.

Jarosch declined to say to how many athletes to whom Mayer sold the EPO and the other drugs, or what sports those athletes were active in.

Police on Friday arrested an Austrian cyclist who received EPO from the same pharmacist, Jarosch said.

Mayer's presence among the Austrian Nordics team at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, in defiance of a doping related ban, triggered drug raids by Italian police who found syringes and drugs in the Austrian base.

Mayer was banned from the Olympics until beyond 2010 after a blood doping scandal at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.