Dr Schmidt admitted to having helped athletes engage in blood doping since 2012, taking pages from Fuentes' playbook. He claims to have wanted to help athletes and prevent them from harming themselves by offering his professional services.

He and his assistants helped athletes withdraw, store and re-infuse their own blood for performance enhancing purposes. One cross-country skier, Max Hauke, was caught mid-transfusion at the 2019 world championships.

The investigation led to the rapid sanctions of Georg Preidler, Stefan Denifl, Kristijan Koren, Borut Bozic, Kristijan Durasek and Alessandro Petacchi and mountain biker Christina Kollmann-Forstner, in addition to six skiers.