The Public Prosecutor’s Office requested suspended sentences in May for individuals judged for their involvement in the doping scheme of the now-defunct W52-FC Porto, on the condition that all compensate the Portuguese Cycling Federation (FPC), concluding that “all facts and crimes” alleged had been proven.
On April 24, 2022, during the Grande Prémio O Jogo, the Judiciary Police conducted “multiple home and non-home searches across various national regions,” involving about 120 personnel, primarily targeting the homes of W52-FC Porto cyclists and officials.
In the ‘Prova Limpa’ operation, several hundred syringes and needles, blood transfusion materials or even bags with blood traces, and doping substances such as betamethasone, somatropin, menotropin, TB 500, insulin, or Aicar, among others, were seized.
The 26 defendants face charges of trafficking prohibited substances and methods, while only 14 face charges for administering such substances and methods.
Among them are Adriano Teixeira de Sousa, known as Adriano Quintanilha, the Calvário Várzea Cycling Club Association—the club that originated the team—, then sporting director Nuno Ribeiro and his assistant José Rodrigues.
In the closing arguments of a trial that began in February 2024, the prosecutor, assigning different degrees of responsibility to the defendants, considered Quintanilha, Ribeiro, and the team’s accountant Hugo Veloso as “the main mentors and responsible parties” for the doping scheme at W52-FC Porto.
During the trial, the former sporting director and the team owner presented opposing and contradictory versions, with Ribeiro admitting to the existence of doping, financed and encouraged by Adriano Quintanilha, “a master manipulator who wanted to win at all costs.”
The 2003 Volta a Portugal winner claimed that Quintanilha funded the doping within the team, giving money to cyclists to purchase illicit products, which the owner of W52-FC Porto denied.
The prosecutor recognized the challenge of determining penalties for the defendants, which include pharmacists who ‘supplied’ the doping substances, arguing that despite the severity of the crimes and given their primary nature, they “should not serve effective sentences.”
João Rodrigues, Rui Vinhas, Ricardo Mestre, Samuel Caldeira, Daniel Mestre, José Neves, Ricardo Vilela, Joni Brandão, José Gonçalves, and Jorge Magalhães are the former W52-FC Porto cyclists judged for trafficking prohibited substances and methods, along with Daniel Freitas, who represented the team from 2016 to 2018.
Most of these cyclists, including Rodrigues, Vinhas, and Mestre, three former winners of the Volta a Portugal, admitted in court to using doping substances and conducting blood transfusions since 2020, noting that doping was a widespread practice in national cycling.
“With this scheme, cycling died. It was a scandal so great and overwhelming,” declared the prosecutor in the closing arguments.
W52-FC Porto was the leading team in the national peloton, having consecutively won the Volta a Portugal from 2016 to 2021 on the road. However, the 2017 and 2018 editions, won by Raúl Alarcón, and 2021, claimed by Amaro Antunes, later had no winner due to doping suspensions imposed on the two former cyclists for biological passport anomalies.
