The Lost Sheep

FEBRUARY 27, 2019: It is a cold and quiet morning in Seefeld. In less than an hour, the first rays of sunlight will brush the festively adorned mountains, patiently waiting in their white winter gowns.

Soon, the music will start to play. Soon, the town will wake up. Soon, buses will roll in, and tens of thousands of spectators will cheer for their heroes in the 15-kilometer classic race.

But this day will not be remembered for heroes.

Outside Hotel Bergland, beneath the revealing glow of streetlights on Innsbrucker Strasse, armed police are ready to move in.

“DO I KNOW what day it is today? Yes, it struck me just now, on the drive here. It’s February 27.”

“The same date?”

“The same date,” he nods. “Exactly five years ago today.”

“How do you feel about that?”

He exhales deeply and looks up at the ceiling, as if the answer lies somewhere high above, where all human mistakes and lies await forgiveness.

“It’s wild how fast the years have passed,” he finally says. “Five years…”

He lets the thought sink in, shaking his head.

“Sometimes it feels like yesterday, other times like a completely different life. So much has happened in that time, so much has shaped and changed me. I’m a different person now—not a skier anymore. I’ve moved on, almost finished with my studies.”

Outside, ski lifts carry the day’s first skiers up the mountain peaks. Down at the cross-country stadium, parking lots fill up as skis and poles are unloaded from cars.

He brings his gaze down from the ceiling.

“IT FELT LIKE a dream—a bad dream,” Max Hauke says quietly.

“When the police stormed in, I felt a chill run down my spine. At first, I thought: ‘Oh, fuck!’ That’s the best word to describe it. But as I sat there for an hour, unable to move, I also felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. Right then, I had no idea what it would lead to in terms of media coverage and reactions. I was mostly relieved that it was all over.”

“Didn’t you feel guilty?”

“Of course I did,” Max says.

“I had carried so much stress in my body for a long time. I had hidden the big secret from everyone, even my girlfriend and my family. They were the ones on my mind as I sat there in the hotel room, surrounded by police. I knew they were at the stadium, waiting to cheer me on, unaware of what was unfolding. I just hoped they were okay—and that someday, they might forgive me..”

FIVE CROSS-COUNTRY SKIERS were arrested on this dark February day in 2019. «Operation Aderlass», named after the old medical practice of bloodletting, uncovered an international doping ring. At first, five cheaters: Max Hauke and Dominik Baldauf from Austria, Andreas Veerpalu and Karel Tammjärv from Estonia, and Alexey Poltoranin from Kazakhstan.

A month later, police revealed that the network surrounding German doping doctor Mark Schmidt, based in Erfurt, involved at least 21 top athletes from eight countries and five sports.

It was a scandal—one of the biggest in the history of anti-doping efforts. Yet, it is the police video, the leaked seconds from the raid at Hotel Bergland, that went viral and will always be remembered. The door opening. The shouts from the police. The athlete with the needle in his arm. The guilty look, the shock, and resignation.

“I’ve watched the video many times,” Max Hauke says today.

“How do you feel about it?”

He takes a deep breath, as if five years of punishment, suspension, condemnation, reflection, and regret can be summed up in a single exhalation.

“Today, I see it as the beginning of my new life,” he finally says.

“I’ve served my punishment and put the matter behind me. In the first years, I felt a lot of guilt when I saw that video because I knew I had done something terribly wrong. But I’ve also felt anger because the police should never have leaked that footage. And frustration because the media frenzy made it all about me. If you Google ‘doping and Austria,’ it’s my name and picture that come up—it’s the same on Wikipedia. As if I’m the only lost sheep.”

He raises an apologetic hand.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Max Hauke, as if to stop the question rising like an angry crowd in a small room.

He lifts his chin and straightens his back.

“It was my choice to dope. I take full responsibility for that; I have to live with it,” he says. “But there was also an environment around me that led to that decision.”

AUSTRIAN CROSS-COUNTRY skiing has a double-tracked trail of doping scandals in its past. During the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City 2002, two of the nation’s skiers, Marc Mayer and Achim Walcher, were disqualified and banned for blood doping. Penalties were also handed to their coach and father figure, Walter Mayer, and chiropractor Volker Mueller, who assisted with the misdeeds and transfusions.

In the Torino Olympics four years later, Italian police raided the residence of six Austrian cross-country skiers and biathletes. What they found read like a textbook on cheating: syringes, blood bags, intravenous infusion valves, bottles of saline, a used hemoglobin monitor, and a plethora of banned substances. The six athletes were banned from the Olympics for life, and the Austrian Olympic Committee followed up with the same punishment for 14 involved staff members.

But it didn’t stop there. Shaken by the scandals of 2002 and 2006, Austria fielded no male cross-country skiers at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. Yet, four years later in Sochi, the bomb detonated once more.

On the eve of the 50 km race, the International Olympic Committee announced that Johannes Dürr had tested positive for a banned substance. He was suspended from skiing for two years and later banned for life after Operation Aderlass in 2019.

“I see it as impossible to compete at the very top without doping,” Dürr told the court before being sentenced to 15 months of suspended prison time.

“I WAS SELECTED for the Austrian national cross-country team for the World Championships in Oslo 2011. I went there with strong results from the Junior World Championships. Everyone was happy for me. ‘You’re a great talent. Now you’ve made it to Holmenkollen.’ And as a young skier, the World Championships in Oslo were naturally a huge experience,” Max says.

Outside, the sun has made several attempts to pierce the dark clouds over Ramsau this morning. It’s not uncommon in this part of Austria, where temperatures climb the steep mountainsides and tether the clouds in a battle between warm and cold air masses, between good and evil.

“I remember sitting in Oslo as a rookie during dinners. After the races, there was always this toxic talk between the leaders, coaches, and athletes. Every strong performance by other nations was explained with comments like, ‘What did they eat for breakfast? What was in their drink bottles?’”

“They talked about doping?”

“No one mentioned the word doping,” Max explains. “Because we sat in an open room with others present. But I quickly understood what they were talking about—it was about doping.”

In the back of his mind, the promising junior athlete carried the national scandals from Salt Lake City and Torino. In the newspapers, more cases from other countries were being exposed.

“Each positive test was like proof—a confirmation of what everyone was saying,” he explains.

Gradually, suspicion grew that something was still happening within his own team as well.

“No one ever asked me to start doping, but that toxic talk does something to you. It changes your attitude towards doping, breaks down barriers, and makes you believe that all the best are doping. It was presented as normal, as necessary as training, eating, and sleeping.”

Max Hauke trains, eats, and sleeps—as much as he can. Yet, he leaves the Sochi Olympics as 46th in the sprint and 57th in the 15 km classic. It was the games where Austrian skiing would face yet another doping shock.

“Johannes Dürr is five years older than me. We went to the same school, and he was always one of the athletes I looked up to.”

“Did you know Dürr was doping?”

“Yes, by the time we got to Sochi, I knew,” Max answers honestly.

“I wasn’t involved and didn’t know with whom or what, but I was very aware that he was using banned substances. We were good friends at the time and spoke closely during training camps.”

“Weren’t you angry? Upset?”

He lets the question linger in the increasingly heavy indoor air. Outside, the last feeble rays of sunlight are swallowed by gathering clouds, making the room darker.

“No, I wasn’t,” he says.

“I just thought, okay, I’m young. Maybe in two or three years, I’ll get the chance to do the same. I believed that I first needed to achieve better results, that the doctor would only work with athletes who could win.”

FOR YEARS, Max Hauke climbed hills and descended slopes to shave off seconds and fractions of seconds. But his experience was that competitors only got faster.

“I particularly remember a World Cup race in Rybinsk,” he says.

“All the Russians were in the lead, skiing like madmen. It was full sprint from start to finish, and several of us on the team talked about it afterward. ‘These Russians are definitely doped. We have to do something.’”

Then he met his old friend Dürr.

“‘Here’s the number. Just call him. He’s waiting for you.’ It was as simple as that,” Max explains about the first contact.

“Wasn’t that a big step to take?”

“Not really,” he answers honestly.

“At first, I just arranged a meeting with the German doctor. He explained what he could help with. We looked at a few different programs together, and I took them home to think about it. And when we finally started, I just thought, ‘Now I’m part of the system. Now I’m one of them. Now I can ski fast too.’”

“But you knew it was wrong?”

He shifts, the chair creaking beneath him.

“Yes, I knew,” he finally says. “But I had done everything I could in terms of training—everything it takes to reach my highest level. Doping was all I had left. It was just the next step, the final one.”

“And how much better did you become?”

“About one percent.”

“FOR MOST PEOPLE, that might sound insignificant,” Max Hauke says. “But when you’re competing in a 30-minute ski race, that one percent translates to 18 seconds and many places on the results list. And if you race for an hour, you gain more than half a minute. But I never got the full benefit of doping. Sometimes I was so stressed that I skied worse instead.”

He spreads his arms, the same two that had his own blood flow in and out during sessions with Schmidt.

“When you dope, you also need to be calm in your head and handle the stress. I wasn’t good at that. I was afraid of being caught. It gnawed at me to carry this enormous secret that could never come out. And the organization of it all added more stress—contacting the doctor, arranging meetings, knocking on doors late at night and early in the morning. All the things the Russian athletes didn’t have to deal with because their doping was systemized.”

“What did your leaders know?”

Max Hauke shrugs.

“I guess no one wanted to know anything. No one talked about it, no one asked questions. There was just this toxic talk about how the best were doping and that training alone likely wouldn’t take you to the top. As long as the athletes believed that, it was best for everyone else not to get involved. If the athletes were caught, they could just point at the idiots—the stupid guys.”

IN OCTOBER 2019, eight months after the raid in Seefeld, Max Hauke pleaded guilty to using blood doping and growth hormones in a packed courtroom in Innsbruck. He had already been banned from sports for four years, effective from March 1. Now, he was also sentenced to five months of suspended prison time and a fine of 480 euros for “serious sports fraud.”

The court considered it mitigating that Hauke had cooperated from the first interrogation and had already repaid nearly 25,000 euros in prize money and sponsorships.

“First and foremost, I blame myself for doing it, but it was also the talk within the team and the availability that drove me to doping. It was a very stupid choice—my life’s biggest mistake,” he repeats.

WE PACK UP THE video camera and turn off the microphone. Driving toward Hauke’s apartment to collect skis and gear for the photoshoot, we catch the lingering glances of pedestrians and skiers who recognize the former elite athlete. For weeks and months, he was front-page news across the country. The viral police video remains on the internet, never to disappear. And some still remember him as a child.

Max was just a boy when he leaned over the fence here in Ramsau, cheering for Christian Hoffmann in his sprint duel against Thomas Alsgaard. The relay gold at the 1999 World Championships remains the pinnacle of Austrian cross-country skiing history. But the darker side of that triumph is that Hoffmann’s career later ended with a two-year suspension for doping violations.

“The last five years haven’t really changed how people see me. Those who greeted me before still do. And those who just looked down at the ground still don’t talk to me,” Max says.

The car pulls into the parking lot in front of his apartment. There are no photos from his skiing career on the walls—only those of his family: his partner, Veronica, and their three-year-old son, Anton.

“Hot potato!” Max says with a wry smile. “That’s what I became. No one in Austria wanted to touch me after what happened. It’s been five years, and the only person from the Austrian Ski Federation I’ve spoken to since that day in Seefeld is Trond Nystad.”

The Norwegian coach, who resigned on the spot, still lives in Ramsau am Dachstein, just a few turns away from Hauke’s apartment. The night before, we had met the ski coach from Fauske at the same hotel we just drove from—bitter, like the beer he shared with us.

“Ten days later, he reached out,” Max recalls. “I wrote him a letter to apologize. When he received it, he called me and said, ‘Alright, Max. When this settles, give me a call. We’ll sit down, and you can tell me your full story.’”

“I GREW UP with parents who did everything for me,” says Max Hauke as he finally straps on his skis and poles. “They drove me everywhere and traveled across Europe to watch me compete.”

Towering above the ski arena in Ramsau are Torstein, Mitterspitz, and Dachstein, each nearly 3,000 meters high. In a snow-scarce winter, the peaks loom dark, as if weary of the doping scandals themselves, now standing guard over the valley to ensure everyone stays on the right path moving forward.

“I come from a privileged home and had every opportunity,” says Max, leaning on his poles with his head lowered.

“I remember my mother saying, ‘Max, do something else. Why cross-country skiing?’ She was always skeptical when other skiers were faster than me. She saw me being beaten by machines and probably feared what it might lead to. And my father felt a lot of guilt when I was caught—for introducing me to cross-country skiing in the first place.”

“Did they know nothing? Did they never ask?”

“No, I didn’t tell anyone, not even Veronica,” Max admits. “Later, she told me she knew I was carrying something heavy. But she was afraid to ask, too.”

“What did you say to your family when you were caught?”

“That it was my choice, my mistake,” Max replies.

“I always dreamed of becoming one of the best, and in my mind and my environment, that wasn’t possible without doping. That belief led to the biggest mistake of my life.”

He glances up at the stern mountains and the gray sky above us. I ask if he still believes that all the best in cross-country skiing are doping.

He shakes his head, dismissing the notion.

“Some will probably always cheat to reach the top,” he says. “But I also believe it’s possible to become the best in the world without doping. Unfortunately, I was already working with the doctor when Trond came to us. I remember him saying, ‘Max, the female Norwegian skiers are stronger than you.’ ‘Max, you need to train more.’ ‘Max, skip the rest week.’ ‘Max, stay longer in high altitude.’”

“Did you follow Trond’s philosophy?”

He shakes his head again.

“Not completely,” he answers. “I feared it would be too much training, that I would perform worse and lose my spot on the team. I often think about what I could have achieved if Trond had come to us earlier, if I had grown up with Norwegian expertise and endurance training knowledge.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I’ve realized that the best coaches and ski technicians make a bigger difference than one percent.”

“THE BEST WAY to prevent doping,” Max Hauke says, “is to create the best possible environment.”

“All athletes dream of being the best, and it’s up to federations, ski clubs, and coaches to build an environment where they can grow without doubt or fear. When an athlete feels supported by the strongest possible environment, they feel secure, and those dangerous thoughts—the ones that lead you astray—never take root.”

Back in the parking lot, we meet up with his partner and their son. The three-year-old runs toward his father with an innocent grin and his small arms stretched out for a big hug. One day, he will type his father’s name into a search bar and discover the weight his father has carried.

“That day will come,” Max says softly, watching his son’s smile.

“And as a father, I will tell my child the truth—that I made a terrible mistake. Maybe he can learn from it. The doping case is part of my life, and that means it will always be part of his life, too.”

For three years, a friend refused to speak to Max Hauke. One day, they found themselves together at a birthday party.

“We ended up talking for two hours,” Max says. “And now we’re friends again. For me, that proved that talking might heal. So that’s my role in the sport now. I tell my story. If someone wants to learn from it, they can. If they don’t, it’s their choice.” 

Max Hauke has completed his sentence. The widely circulated video from the police raid remains available online but is legally prohibited from being published in Austria. The police officer responsible for sharing the video was later suspended and fined.

Note: Anti-Doping Norway has submitted this interview to the Austrian Ski Federation. The federation has confirmed receipt and review of the case but has declined to comment on Hauke’s account.