Johann Muhlegg

Johann Mühlegg is a German cross-country skier who now competes for Spain. He competed for Germany in the 1992, 1994, and 1998 Winter Olympics, though he began having trouble with the country's ski federation in 1993. In 1998 he left. His good relationships with the members of the cross-country skiing Spanish national team, specially Juan Jesús Gutierrez and Haritz Zunzunegui made it possible for Johan Muehlegg to obtain spanish nationality.

In 1999 he won the cross-country skiing World Cup for the first time. Three years later, in Lathi Cross-country skiing World Championships, he won two medals. A silver medal (he finished third the career, but the skier who arrived in second place was disqualified for nandrolone, and the gold medal in the 50 kms free-style.

In the 2002 Winter Olympic Games he competed for Spain, winning golds in the 30K freestyle and 10K pursuit races. His successes gained him congratulations from King Juan Carlos of Spain.

He came in first in the 50K classical race held on the final Saturday of competition, February 23, but was disqualified from that race and thrown out of the Games the next day after testing positive for darbepoetin, which boosts red blood cell count, but was not yet a banned substance because it was a recently developed drug.

He kept his initial two gold medals.

Traces of darbepoetin were found in a random urine test February 21. Before the race on February 23, a random test for hemoglobin levels found Mühlegg above the limit; a second test five minutes later was below the limit, and he was allowed to compete. During the race he came on strong at the end to beat Mikhail Ivanov of Russia by 14.9 seconds.