Austrian Coach Rams Roadblock

Austrian Walter Mayer, the Nordic ski coach at the center of a doping-related investigation at the 2006 Olympics, crashed his car into a police cruiser set up as an impromptu barrier Sunday night just over the Austria-Italy border, authorities said.

Mayer, 48, the Austrian cross-country and biathlon coach, was slightly injured in the crash, which took place during a pursuit in the town of Paternion in southwestern Austria, about 250 miles from Turin, officials told the Associated Press. After the accident, Austrian ski officials released a statement saying Mayer was being fired.

The crash occurred only hours after Italian authorities had searched the Austrian biathlon and cross-country team quarters near Olympic venues in the mountains outside Turin, following a tip that Mayer -- banned from the Olympics through 2010 amid suspicions of Austrian blood-doping at the 2002 Games -- was with the team.

The search was the first anti-doping raid by police on Olympic athletes at the Games. Italian law provides for criminal sanctions in doping matters.

The International Olympic Committee announced, meanwhile, that it had conducted surprise doping tests Saturday night on Austrian cross-country skiers and biathletes. An initial report had put the figures at seven skiers and three biathletes but the IOC fixed the number at six and four. Test results were not immediately available.

The identities of those tested were not disclosed -- nor were the names of five others tested earlier, with anti-doping authorities concerned those athletes might already have left Italy for Austria or points unknown.

The inquiry began when two World Anti-Doping Agency doping control officers, on a testing mission in late January, discovered what they believed to be blood-doping equipment in the basement of a pension-style hotel in Ramsau, Austria, connected to Mayer.

-- Alan Abrahamson

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The Czech Republic fired cross-country Coach Kvetoslav Zalcik on Sunday after he inadvertently submitted the wrong name for the final leg of the men’s Olympic 4x10 kilometer relay race.

“It’s a very hard mistake he made, and the result is he got fired and he will go home,” Czech Olympic Committee spokesman Jan Martinek said.

Martinek said the Czech Olympic team discussed possible options “for this bad situation that occurred after the race. It’s a really bad result for the Czechs.”

Zalcik accidentally wrote in sprint specialist Dusan Kozisek instead of Milan Sperl for the fourth and final leg.

The Czechs were in third place after the third leg but finished ninth after Kozisek, who normally doesn’t ski distance events, raced the final leg of the relay.