Mauricio Codocea
08/03/2020 - 20:06
- Clarín.com
- sports
The world of tennis shook this Monday with the confession of Mariano Puerta regarding the excuse he used to reduce the sanction for the doping in the final of Roland Garros 2005 that he lost to Rafael Nadal. "The explanation we used as a strategy was a lie," the former number 9 in the world vented in an interview with Sebastián Torok published in the newspaper La Nación.
At that time, the Argentine tennis player argued that he had taken water from a glass used by his then partner, Sol Estevanez, who had poured drops of a medication for menstrual pain into it. That allegation before different courts managed to reduce the sentence from eight years (he was a repeat offender) to just two.
Now, in the reversal of the facts that he offered Torok from the United States, the Argentine tennis player assured that he had forgotten his bottle of vitamin supplements and that the former weightlifter Darío Lecman, who was then his physical trainer, told him that he would ask him a friend, who worked in a laboratory, to give him the tablets.
Mariano Puerta with the Roland Garros runner-up trophy, along with Rafael Nadal and Zinedine Zidane. (Photo: AFP)
When, after the positive technical team asked him if he still had the pills, they sent to examine and learned that seven of them had always according door- etilefrina traces of the banned drug he jumped in the final in Paris.
On Sunday March 18, 2007, shortly before returning to compete, Puerta gave an interview to this media in which he assured: "He always carried 100,000 points. It was very clear that the skinny had nothing to do with the cases that happened to me. I think he is one of the best physical trainers in the country and if I think Lecman is the best that can prepare me, I will work with him. I don't care what anyone says. "
Almost a decade ago, Lecman suffered a stroke that left him unable to even speak for the next two years. Today is much better and, although it requires some breaks to elaborate the concepts, you can carry on a conversation without problems. It is what he does before Clarín to expand his version of events.
"I do not understand why Mariano involves me in this fact. I simply trained him and I would never have given him anything to take that would put his career at risk. That within the world of weightlifting there are cases or talk of doping, does not mean that he has than being responsible for their negligence, "he says.
Lecman, in photos he made during an interview with Clarín in 2017. (Photo: Juan Manuel Foglia)
He even appeals to the words of Andrés Schneiter, also interviewed by Torok. "As he says in the note, some time later we went back to training together. Two years after the episode. Tell me if someone who supposedly screwed up your career will continue to be your coach, " he says and completes: "I really am out of place."
-In the interview you said that you were surprised and that you were going to call Puerta immediately. You spoke with him?
-Not. When I thought about it, I didn't feel like talking to him. Not anymore ... Done. When he said anything, like what he said ... I don't like this anymore, I don't want to ... I'm not like that.
-You were in charge of Mariano's physical training. Wasn't it normal that you were aware of the vitamin supplements your player was taking?
-Yes of course. And it was. I asked him what he was taking, who gave it to him, where he bought it. Imagine that I have been training up to 50 people. And I ask you , because you have to take care of yourself all the time.
-Do you have friends in laboratories?
-No, I never had. I don't know who gave him (the pills). I don't know if he was a nutritionist, I have no idea.
-In the note you also said that the sanction had given you anger because "at that time Mariano was a good person." Does it mean that you no longer consider it that way?
- The truth, I don't even care anymore. I know he was a good person with him. I helped him a lot, he was alone.
- How it fell to you that Schneiter also pointed to you by your "history of quilombos"?
-I can not believe it. But I am calm. Neither Schneiter nor Puerta would say anything. It doesn't make me angry, I don't even make me sad. It is done. This is beyond all. Luckily I work a lot, I have no problem with anyone.
Lecman (the first on the left) with José Meolans, Elizabeth Copes, Javier Conte and Alejandra Carbone in a production of Clarín in Athens, during the 2004 Olympic Games. (Photo: Clarín Archive)
Lecman never tested positive but was marked by a situation he experienced at the 2004 Athens Olympics, when from one moment to another he flew to Buenos Aires in what many interpreted as an escape from an anti-doping control. At that time, he spoke of a personal problem without further clarification.
"I had a problem with my old man, who passed away eight months ago. He had Alzheimer's, he had it for years. And he had another problem that I couldn't even train for. But he wanted to compete so much, even if he was shit , I came back to Athens and I participated. And I competed so badly, because I slept badly, I didn't even sleep, I was very nervous, I was talking to my old man ... He was not in good health. But I don't feel like talking about it because I get sick ", relates the former weightlifter before apologizing for not broaching the subject in greater depth.
Even doping versions slipped over him as well when a hamstring tear left him out of Atlanta 1996 after Livio Forneris, then undersecretary of Sport, questioned his injury "within days of competing."
The third eye
During those years of the Puerta-Lecman duo, the team had a spare wheel that used to be in charge of setting up the player in the event of the eventual absence of the former Pan-American champion: Claudio Henschke, current coach of the Argentine national team of weights.
"In the first part of the relationship I will have hardly done any training with Mariano; I did go on a tour of Europe in 2007," he recalls before Clarín . "We played three tournaments in Italy but I never discussed it with him. He never gave me confidence and I wasn't interested in getting into that topic either," he explains.
"Yes, I can tell you that I know many more cases of contamination than of knowingly violating the rules," he says, so he finds meaning in the former tennis player's explanation.
Claudio Henschke, coach of the Argentine team of weights and former assistant physical trainer of Mariano Puerta. (Photo: termometro.com.ar)
"Physically Mariano seemed privileged to me and tennis was incredible, I was thrilled to see him play. The doping did not close me, it seemed unnecessary; later, when I saw the amounts that jumped out at him, I understood that it could easily be a contamination. And that is what I believe today. And that I did not even know the history of the woman's glass, "says Henschke, who defines: " I do not see evil on either side. "
"We are going to suppose that Darío ordered a multivitamin to be made. What is the point of doing it conscientiously with that substance?" Regarding Andrés Schneiter's remarks that perhaps Lecman could have told Puerta "take this and nothing happens", the also weightlifter believes that it has happened "because Darío was also an athlete and is not an idiot."
"I don't know why (Puerta) throws the ball at Darío; maybe there is something between them that I never knew," says Claudio, who also affirms that, at least as far as his knowledge went, he did not know of any friend of Lecman's. to work in a laboratory.
FK
