Perner: 'I was scared'
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ByEurosport
Published 20/02/2006 at 15:01 GMT
Wolfgang Perner said he fled the Austria team camp following police raids on Saturday as he feared he would be jailed. Carabinieri raided the hotel where Perner and team-mates were staying, provoking Perner and former world champion Wolfgang Rottmann to leave the Games.
BIATHLON 2006 Torino 2006 Perner
Image credit: Imago
"After the search, I just wanted to go," Perner, who was fourth in the Sprint, said on Monday.
"A South Tyrolean carabinieri told me there were things I wasn't supposed to have. I thought I'd rather leave before they jail me and I don't see my family again."
Perner and Rottmann are expected to be disciplined for quitting the team without permission and risk being banned from the next two Winter Games.
But a distressed Perner said Italian police's "inhuman" late evening search left him utterly shaken.
"I had to fully undress twice until I was completely naked," he said, adding he refused when asked to sign a statement written in Italian.
"I refused because I don't understand Italian, and they went really raving. I was afraid."
Perner would not comment whether banned substances had been found in his room, but the 38-year-old added his biathlon career is at an end.
"For me, it's over," Perner said. "I don't need to do biathlon ever again."
AWOL duo make contact, risk ban
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