The apartment in Boston was left in the biggest mess that a journalist could leave who was sure he would return there to stay all month. Everything had to be urgently accommodated and put together to unexpectedly change the World Cup roadmap.
In reality, the World Cup was over, but its coverage had to continue. During the Boston-Dallas stretch the first news about Maradona’s “doping” occurred, nothing more and nothing less. From the Texas airport to the Four Seasons in Dallas, from the “drug cocktail” to the Cotton Bowl stadium of the defeat with Bulgaria and the “they cut off my legs” hotel.
Return to the airport, to Dallas-Boston for a sudden exodus. From there to Los Angeles. From the East Coast to the West Coast. If the National Team came out first or second in its group, the stay continued in Boston, with staff and journalists. Hence the “planned” disorder of the department. After finishing third because of the “cocktail” and the “severed legs,” they had to leave unexpectedly for Los Angeles. 4800 kilometers away. After the 2800 round trip: Boston-Dallas-Boston.
At the Rose Bowl in Pasadena it was the chronicle of an announced ending. Defeat with Romania and elimination. In all of what he went through, the journalist should get rid of emotions, not give the fan a shred and continue with his professional obligation. With Diego involved it was difficult.
But when surrender was inevitable, with all the coverage collapsed, the antidote appeared to sustain the job above all. The unexpected interview arose. A meeting with the Chilean Antonio Losada and the Spanish Agustín Rodríguez Cano, the biochemists responsible for the FIFA anti-doping control analyzes that had found ephedrine in Maradona’s urine.
A revealing interview that this chronicler did 30 years ago for the newspaper La Capital of Mar del Plata, which he published in the book “Pelota Cibernética, la novel de los Mundiales”, and which today establishes, 30 years later, that there was no doping of Maradona in the 94 World Cup:
“(…) It is not, as they say, that this man has taken five substances; What happens is that when you take a medicine, when it passes through the body, some of its components are transformed into other substances. For example, ephedrine is metabolized to pphenypropanolamine; So if you take ephedrine, two appear. If you take methylephedrine, ephedrine and pphenylpropanolamine appear, then you have three. Sometimes, if a lot of time passes, all three compounds do not appear, because the parent compound is gone and only the metabolites remain. And the other substance is pseudoephedrine, which gives us as a metabolite Northseudoephedrine or cathine, as it appears in the lists, so it was a substance and its metabolite. In this particular case it seems that Maradona, technically, took only two substances, and both were ephedrine-based (Dr. Rodríguez Cano).
-So there was no special preparation as was wanted to be seen from the beginning…
-No, not at all…Many doctors wrongly thought that it was a cocktail, even from the United States. (Dr. Losada).
-The serious thing is that more than an “opinion” it was actually an official version, because the word “cocktail” came directly from the mouth of Dr. D’Hoogh, the medical chief of FIFA’s anti-doping control, precisely in the press conference that the FIFA leadership gave in Dallas to confirm that Maradona was out of the World Cup… It was almost a stubbornness of this Belgian doctor to highlight more than once that it was a specially prepared “cocktail” of substances…
-I don’t know if he meant cocktail of the sum of different substances or the sum of ephedrine and its metabolites… (Dr. Losada).
-You, who were the selection doctor, do you think that this is simply a poorly supplied medication?
-I think so, what happened with Maradona was regrettable stupidity. Maradona should have notified what he had taken, what they gave him or what was taken at his expense (…) (Dr. Losada).
-Another thing that was said at the beginning of this case is that ephedrine makes it difficult for anti-doping control to detect other substances…Is that really true?
-Not at all. Ephedrine cannot disguise the detection of other prohibited substances in any way (…).
In the last part of the report, Dr. Rodríguez, who worked on the test taken on Calderé in México 86, confirmed that the Spanish soccer player “had been prescribed a prohibited medicine” and recalled that the Iberian team doctor on that occasion had was Dr. Jorge Guillén.
Calderé was given only one suspension date; to Maradona, 15 months. And Dr. Guillén already worked for FIFA precisely in taking anti-doping control tests for that 94 World Cup along with the sincere Losada and Rodríguez Cano, who did not avoid admitting, even if their job was in danger, that with Diego “no there was a cocktail of drugs” and that the ephedrine did not cover up any other substance.
2024-06-25 03:01:00
#cut #legs #doping #hidden #story #blow #Diego #Maradona #years
