Jesús María Manzano Ruano (San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 12 May 1978) is a former Spanish professional road racing cyclist.
He is famous as the whistleblower of systematic doping within his cycling team and his statements led the Guardia Civil to conduct the Operación Puerto investigation around the sports doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.
At that time Kelme was one of the strongest Spanish teams in the Vuelta a España and won the race with Roberto Heras in 2000, Gonzalez in 2002 as well as being the runner up in 2001 with Óscar Sevilla.
Manzano said that at the end of 2002 two half litre sachets of his blood were removed in a clinic in Valencia which was intended to be transfused during the 2003 Tour de France.
On the first climb of the day, Col de Portes, Manzano and Richard Virenque attacked the peloton and got away in an attempt to bridge up to an earlier breakaway.
[6] The Tour de France doctor who was the first medically trained person on the scene to tend to Manzano mistakenly diagnosed a heatstroke.
It has been reported that by making the confessions to the As newspaper as well as selling television rights outside of Spain, Manzano earned 300,000 euros.
[13][14] Manzano made further revelations in a second interview with the paper where he alleged that the teams en-masse withdrawal from stage one of the Tour of Portugal in 2003[15] was connected to a positive doping test in the previous Tour de France and that the riders withdrew en masse to avoid being tested and subsequently caught.
These included Eufemiano Fuentes who was at that time the current Kelme team doctor, Walter Virú the team doctor before Fuentes, and Alfredo Córdova who was working for Liberty Seguros but was involved with Kelme in 2003 during the 2003 Tour de France, the 2003 Tour of Portugal and in Valencia when Manzano was gravely ill after a blood transfusion.
[24] Two years after Manzano's first allegations to the international press, the Operación Puerto investigation began in early 2006 with the result of arrests in May 2006.
[30] Manzano has been writing columns and has been interviewed several times since the Operación Puerto scandal as an expert on doping practices in the sport.