Vienna, Austria – A former Austrian cross country ski coach has been handed a 15-month prison sentence by a Vienna court on Thursday for supplying athletes with performance-enhancing blood doping materials.

Walter Mayer, however, will serve only a fraction of that sentence after the court suspended 12 months of the sentence for three years and will also receive credit for the several weeks spent in custody following his March 2009 arrest on the charges.

Mayer, 54, was a former coach with the Austrian Ski Federation (OSV) charged with supplying doping materials, including growth hormones and the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) that increases red blood cell production, between 2005 and 2009. After being implicated in a blood transfusion scandal at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in which he was later cleared, Mayer was banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from attending the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, or the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

The OSV nevertheless sent Mayer to Turin in what was described as a “private capacity,” prompting IOC officials and police to conduct coordinated raids on the hotels where the Austrian ski team was staying. Used syringes, blood bags and performance-enhancing drugs were found. Mayer fled the area and crashed his car into a police roadblock near the Italian border with Austria.

Three of Mayer’s former athletes — biathlete Wolfgang Perner and cross country skiers Juergen Pinter and Roland Diethart — have been banned permanently from Olympic events.