I am afraid that they will prosecute me again for saying things too clearly
Eufemiano Fuentes
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A couple of weeks ago, at a CELAD (the Spanish anti-doping agency) seminar in Santander, María José Rienda (47) took the floor to rewind twenty years ago, to the Johan Mühlegg scandal.
Rienda knew what he was talking about.
Before becoming Secretary of State for Sport (2018-2020), Rienda had been the best Spanish alpine skier at the time when Mühlegg was the best cross-country skier in the world. Mühlegg, born German and naturalized expressly Spanish, was then Juanito, and as Juanito he had won three golds at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games (10 km 10 km pursuit, 30 km and 50 km) before descending to hell .
A positive for darbepoetina, assistant for the long-distance runner's resistance, was going to cost him the three Olympic golds and his disappearance from public life.
(No one calls him Juanito anymore, his whereabouts are unknown, some locate him in Natal, Brazil, where he teaches kitesurfing classes).
Rein said:
-The strong thing is that, before Spain nationalized him, the Germans were already launching notices. And yet, nobody did anything, and an athlete was adopted who was not in a position to represent us with dignity, and from then on his reputation, and also that of our country, fell to the ground...
Then Pedro García Aguado (53) intervened.
Today he is the older brother on television, and the addiction problems he had had to deal with are well known. But in the nineties he had been an essential water polo player, one of the souls of the wonderful water polo team, silver in Barcelona '92 and gold in Atlanta '96.
Garcia Aguado said:
-At the end of my career I visited a doctor related to athletics, and the man told me: 'I have these products...'. I didn't like what I saw and I said no and left. With what I was carrying (he refers to his polydrug addiction) I already had more than enough...
Smiles in the room.
Doctors, lawyers, scientists, CELAD agents, police officers and journalists had gone to meet in that room of the Menéndez Pelayo University, in the Palacio de La Magdalena. From the stalls, some raised their hands, asking for a turn.
A senior police official in the fight against doping decided to reprimand the athletes:
I don't know if any of you denounced everything you knew or had heard. But I will tell you something: the only way to clean the sport is from within. It is more difficult to infiltrate someone into a sports organization or a national team than it is to infiltrate them into a criminal organization. The complaint of a fellow athlete is in favor of everyone, including the sport, the country, the brand...
José Luis Terreros, director of the anti-doping agency, abounded in the reflection:
–Almost 95% of the complaints that reach us are anonymous. The rest bring names and surnames.
And behind the scenes, another anti-doping police officer told this newspaper:
–Concrete, concrete, we receive about twenty complaints a year. When I speak of concrete, I mean that the athlete who calls us identifies himself. They are few, but there are more and more. There is more and more awareness. We give courses and conferences. However, he adds, athletes continue to resist reporting and that never ceases to amaze us.
And why don't they report?
–Let's see, if you go down the street and see that someone is committing a crime, you will report him, right? Well, in sports, except in very few cases, it is not like that. I don't know if they are afraid of the consequences, of being left out of a team or a group. In sport, the law of silence is established: the figure of the informer, the snitch, the spy is sanctioned... And there are also sports leaders who promote that culture. I don't know, maybe the language needs to be modified. Not talking about a sneak, but about an informant collaborator.
And at the end, an expert from CELAD rounded off the reflection:
–If they are offered the opportunity to dope, I estimate that 50% of the athletes will say that they do not want to know anything, that 45% will say yes or no depending on their eventual circumstances (coming out of an injury, needing a contract or a scholarship or a brand...), and that 5% will say: 'where do I have to sign?' That is to say: there are those who carry it in their blood, and those cases cannot be corrected. Against these, the best weapon is the denunciation of the partner.
