It is Tuesday February 23, it is 8 in the morning and Alex Schwazer (Vipiteno, Italy, 36 years old) answers his mobile with the same energy as if it were 11. The Italian marcher is happy and relieved after almost five years of battles legal proceedings to show that a test positive for testosterone on January 1, 2016 (requested after testifying against Roberto Fischetto, responsible anti-doping doctor of the International Athletics Federation, IAAF) was false.
The Cologne laboratory tested the samples and found them negative.
Not so the IAAF, which requested a more specific test to test and detect synthetic testosterone, which was finally found in Schwazer's urine and certified positive.
The defense requested a DNA test, the Bolzano Court requested the samples from the Cologne laboratory and it took two years to get them (it had to request two international letters rogatory, they tried to sneak unsealed vials from the experts, failures were recorded in the chain custody and lies about the amount of urine preserved).
The Italian athlete's flasks contained an “abnormal” amount of DNA to be considered physiological.
Judge Walter Pelino ruled, after three expert studies, that the samples had been manipulated, "to make it test positive and thus achieve the suspension and discredit of both the athlete and his coach, Sandro Donati."
The Bolzano Court acquitted Schwazer on the 18th in the trial for doping, which is a crime in Italy.
The TAS sentenced him to eight years of suspension in August 2016. “In no race had he suffered such wear and tear,” sums up Schwazer, Olympic champion of the 50km march in Beijing 2008 and father of a four-year-old girl and a four-month-old baby. .
Ask.
In July 2016 you told this newspaper: “I would never have thought of something like this.
As much as I was disqualified in competition… ”.
Answer.
I sometimes talked with Sandro about the Di Terlizzi case [Annamaria, Donati athlete, who was also a victim of manipulation 22 years ago, her urine sample was contaminated with caffeine to make it test positive]… but they were just talks, I never got there to imagine something like this would happen to me.
Being disqualified in competition can happen to all of us and you accept it.
But this has been something with very little precedent.
They have been difficult years, I am happy now because I can finally close the page.
Q.
Why did you handle your samples?
A.
I don't have a single answer.
Yes several hypotheses.
The most comfortable thing was to eliminate me to also eliminate Sandro.
I have not been the champion of the anti-doping fight as Sandro has always been [in the eighties he was removed from the Italian Athletics Federation for refusing to dope their athletes];
their commitment and their struggle have upset more than one person.
The moment you hit me, you also hit Sandro's credibility.
Such strange things have happened in this story that even for me, who am the main victim, it is difficult to answer.
Q.
How have you felt in these four and a half years?
A.
There have been many hard and discouraging moments.
Also because I am an athlete and my place is the street, not the courtrooms.
I found myself in an environment that was not my own, I prepare for a competition and I know that depending on how I feel it will go well, badly or fair.
There were many unknowns here, starting with whether the day would come when we could prove the truth.
He was struggling without knowing if he would achieve the goal, or when.
When you compete you know you have 50 kilometers ahead of you and then it's over.
Here it could be a year, two;
and in the end it has been four and a half.
It hasn't been easy, but I never lost confidence that the day of truth would come.
Q.
How do you feel now?
R.
It is still difficult for me to express it.
I need a little more time to realize what has happened and absorb it.
I have spent days glued to the phone, I have not yet had the peace of mind to reason about all this.
Q.
Who has helped you avoid falling into a black hole?
R.
Sandro has always been by my side and has a lot of experience in this type of matter.
He guided me on what evidence to ask for, on what we had to investigate.
Then my family, having it forces you to put the batteries to get a job and a salary.
If it hadn't been for my family, I would surely have fallen into a well.
It also helped me get back into training, although that took a long time to do.
Without family, I tell you the truth, it would have been tremendously complicated because deep down you continue to see yourself only as an athlete and not as a person, you see yourself as an athlete who has been the victim of something serious.
Having a family makes you see that there are also beautiful things in life.
Q.
What crossed your mind when you came to see in writing the sentence of Roberto Fischetto (IAAF anti-doping
officer
): “This
crucco
[German, by the surname Schwazer] has to die”?
R.
Uffff… I've seen even worse things.
I begin to be aware of everything now.
And now that we've reached the goal of proving the truth, I just want to enjoy the good things.
Q.
How did you wake up the day after the acquittal?
A.
My wife made me a cake with the five Olympic rings and Ida [the eldest daughter, four years old] asked me: "Dad, is you five years old?"
The first thing I thought about that morning was to try to meet all the interview requests and how to balance it with work and training.
Now is when little by little I am feeling things: it is a strange sensation because before when I got up the first thing I thought about was the next step that had to be taken in this fight.
Now that the fight is over, I feel light, relieved.
I feel like a normal person who has stopped being in the war.
Q.
Any message that has made you especially excited?
R.
What I liked the most is that now the Italian sports institutions have returned to show signs of life and have positioned themselves by my side.
[He names the president of CONI, Giovanni Malagó, and Stefano Mei (president of the Italian Athletics Federation]. Before, I was fighting alone against everything. Sandro, my lawyer and I have not had great support in these four and a half years. I'm glad now to have you through the steps to take from now on [get the TAS to remove the sanction and be able to qualify and compete in the Games] If I found myself alone again, I wouldn't want to continue because I'm exhausted.
Q.
Do you want to go to Tokyo?
A.
I would love to, yes, and I hope I can go.
I am penalized for something I have not done.
I am 36 years old, I would like to do some more competition;
this year, next year.
It is not in my power and I know it is complicated.
Q.
Did you never stop training?
A.
I have never been unemployed, but marching is what marching is, I did it again in November 2019. Before, what I did was go out for a run three or four times a week to feel better.
Since November 2019 I have not stopped, but at the rate of four trainings per week.
I am in discreet form, nothing comparable to that of an elite athlete who has two sessions a day.
But I have the basis on which to start over.
Q.
Why didn't you train until November 2019?
R.
After returning from Rio without being able to compete [the CAS denied the precautionary measures], my only objective was to get justice done.
I didn't see myself as an athlete again, I didn't even want to be an athlete again, I just wanted justice.
My return to training coincided with the first order of the examining magistrate who already hinted that the things that had happened were very serious.
At that moment I began to think that there was hope of achieving it because I saw that there was a will on the part of the Italian justice to go to the end.
The one who has come up with the famous sentence of the sentence: "He has not committed the crime."
Q.
There are more forceful sentences in Judge Pelino's car.
"It is understandable that WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and IAAF (now World Athletic, international athletics federation) in order to save face deny even the scientific evidence."
And another: "we are in front of a house of cards built to deceive" ...
R.
I am happy that in this sentence what has happened in these four years has been put black on white because too many times I have heard things like "unfortunate coincidences" from the sports court.
Ok, I understand that sometimes you want to minimize things so that everything does not blow up or to make as little noise as possible ... but in my case it has taken more than a year just to get the famous bottles.
My samples have been under sequestration, a judge had to request them [twice] for international rogatory since in Italy doping is a crime… I do not understand how a normal citizen can refuse that.
It seems implausible to me.
Then when the permission to go to the Cologne laboratory to pick up the flasks arrived ... an open one appears.
It could have been perfectly yours!
They tried to sneak it into the expert.
I do not know if this is normal within a judicial procedure ... it is amazing.
That is why I am happy that all this has been in writing, because they are things that have really happened.
Q.
What has most puzzled you about this story?
R.
That the roles have been reversed.
Normally, the IAAF or WADA should be the first to rejoice if further analysis is done and the athlete, on the contrary, fear such further analysis.
In my case it has been exactly the opposite: every time the Italian justice requested something, the WADA and the IAAF have always opposed or tried to stop it as they could.
It disgusts me because I think about the system, about the athletes;
in how the world of sport should be and how in the end it is not.
I hope someone stops to think about this.
Since Sochi 2014 it has been known that the jars can be opened… And I wonder: And today?
What jars are used for the controls?
Well, the same and seven years have passed.
It doesn't seem normal to me.
So instead of attacking a judge's ruling, the WADA and IAAF focus on ensuring safe, non-tamper-proof jars are used.
Not for me anymore, for all the other athletes.
Q.
Is there anyone who has expressed concern in that regard?
Is it talked about among athletes?
R.
I believe that athletes are so in our world that 95% do not even ask that question.
They do not wonder if the urine that they have just taken and that goes to a laboratory and you will not see again will follow a safe path.
At most they think: something like this will never happen to me.
P.
The hardest moment?
R.
Many of them I have forgotten, directly is that I do not remember them.
I have absolutely no recollection, for example, of the day that Sandro and my lawyer called me [June 2016] to tell me that I had tested positive.
I was in shock.
I do remember a particularly hard day, when the TAS in Rio denied us the precautionary measures to be able to compete and we were going in the taxi to the airport to return home.
We passed right by the circuit where the next day the 20km march would be run [one of the two races that Schwazer was going to contest].
I looked out the window and thought: tomorrow I would have to be racing here and they won't let me.
They forbid me to run and I am innocent.
Q.
Some even still doubt you because in 2012 you were penalized for using EPO.
Why is it difficult to remove that label?
R.
Well, according to that reasoning, an athlete who undergoes his first test and tests negative, would not have to pass one ever again.
Do not?
According to that reasoning you have tested negative, you have shown that you do not dope so you will never dope.
Q.
There are those who believe that everything that happens after a positive for EPO is irrelevant because whoever dopes once has no right to compete again.
A.
I made a mistake and I am guilty.
But I served punishment.
And once you serve punishment, you have to have the same rights as everyone else.
Q.
Do you feel like you have wasted four years?
R.
I don't think about that, because you can't go back.
I am happy because justice has been done.
I am realistic and I live in the now and I only think about the nearest future.
And so I hope at least someone has the decency to give me the two remaining years of my degree.
I would like that.
Q.
What has this story taught you?
R.
That if one knows that he has not done anything wrong, he has to try to go to the end to prove it;
despite the enemies in front of him.
Q.
How do you react to the call of a positive that you know you have not committed?
A.
It is something so unlikely that you don't even know what to think.
It is as if you were being called right now to tell you that you are accused of having killed a person.
What would i think?
Q.
WADA wrote a statement to say that it was dismayed "by the multiple reckless and unfounded accusations made by the judge" and the IAAF said it is unlikely that the samples have been tampered with as the judge believes.
A.
I try to be neutral.
When Prosecutor Bramante asked Judge Pelino to close the case, neither the IAAF nor the WADA objected… And they had 20 days to do so, not two hours.
Weird, no?
[In the final report in the last session of the trial they did ask to go ahead with the procedure and sentence Schwazer].