Sabrina Faija
02/21/2020 - 17:37
- Clarín.com
- sports
Swim 57 kilometers, cross the finish line, reach the podium, celebrate and fade away. Guillermo Bertola Remember that day as if it were yesterday, although two years and 15 days have passed. The Santa Fe-Coronda is the most prestigious open water test in the country and recognized in the world. And the Cordovan can proudly say that he won it in 2018. Although now everything is seen in black clouds, after FINA notified him of a positive in a doping control. The reason? A blood transfusion performed before the race.
Bertola does not deny it. On the contrary, remember how you made that decision in dialogue with Clarín . He notes that he was going through a picture of decomposition, with anemia and gastritis, and that the transfusion was offered as "a healthier solution."
"I was not aware of the subject, I played it very much from the outside. I just wanted to compete, because I had trained a lot. You play a lot of things, that race is very good in dollars and that allows you to pay for trips. My blood was hot: I wanted to compete and I felt that if I didn't do it, I was going to throw everything done up there, "he defends.
Three days later, came the anti-doping control, something usual for Bertola, who is usually exposed to one of them "between nine and eleven times a year." That is to say that after that Santa Fe-Coronda could have submitted to about 20 until on January 20 of this year FINA notified it and temporarily suspended it.
Guillermo Bertola, after winning the Santa Fe - Coronda 2018.
From that moment on, the scholarships of the ENARD, of the Ministry of Sports of the Nation and of the Córdoba Sports Agency, were cut for the winner of the silver medal in the 10-kilometer test of the Pan American Games in Lima 2019 .
"I could have made a legal strategy and said that they had contaminated me, in order to be exonerated. Why am I going to blame a doctor who studied 10 years? Why say they contaminated me? I repudiate the use of substances and the blood thing seemed the most natural thing to me. Now I am sorry, because I am not with the blood up as at that moment that came from being world champion, "he argues.
It is still unknown how long the 30-year-old athlete should stay out of the water. But it is estimated that the suspension could extend for two years . "I do not want to disappear, I want to preach it through teaching. When these things happen, an athlete is left with nothing, like naked. But even in what is happening to me I will seek to grow. I have no plans to leave," he says and shares his illusion of forming "a cooperative to help athletes who have just started and have no support".
The hug with Biagioli after they both hung the silver medal in Lima. Photo COA Twitter
"I plan my life in the future and my career, the Challenger Cup, in which there were 350 swimmers last year. I don't want that to be affected. And that's why I'm thinking of allocating a percentage of the profits to athletes who don't have sponsors and it costs them the start ", reaffirms the winner of two Pan American medals: bronze in Guadalajara 2011 and silver in Lima 2019.
Meanwhile, keep training in Cordoba. Although he acknowledges that the amount of hours in the water dropped ("It is impossible to ignore that one is demotivated by this, but I try not to lose my behavior," he explains), he states that he is "too well" mentally to face a suspension.
"If something gave me the open water race, in addition to competing, it's the ability to face life and things like this," he says. "It should be very bad, but I try to see the positive side of the negative."
HS