Sport always gives second chances. Always. Óscar Ticas can say it, a recurve archer, who has just won a ticket for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Pita, as his friends affectionately call him, is the soul of the archery team, including “recurves” and “compounds.” Simple, persistent and fun, at 37 years old, Oscar has won medals for El Salvador in the Bolivarian, Central American, South American and US Open Games, to mention a few achievements. However, his dream was always to represent his country in the Olympic Games. When in 2016 he got the ticket for the Rio de Janeiro Games he believed he had reached heaven. He didn’t even imagine that it was actually the antechamber to hell. And all for a soccer game between friends.
Name, nothing is going to happen to you!
A mascón, a fall, a scrape on the knee… A seemingly harmless combo that turned lethal and ended his Olympic dream. Despite his reluctance, someone applied a pain-relieving spray to him without realizing that he had steroids, an element that appears on the list of substances prohibited by WADA. Óscar Giralt, lawyer for the Olympic Committee of El Salvador at that time, tells that drama like a novel: “Some physiotherapists from INDES asked him about the scrape and he told them that it was because of soccer. They told him that he couldn’t go to compete, that they were going to put something on him. Ticas told them not to put anything on him, that anything could be considered doping.” According to Giralt, the physiotherapists calmed him down: “Name, nothing is going to happen to you! If we put this to those of the athletics federation. And Pita was on her back, with her electroshock, and they sprayed her twice without her consent.” Conclusion? “I lost my place in the Olympic Games and many other things. No more scholarships, no more sponsors, I couldn’t train…” Ticas recalled about his 12-month sanction. Lawyer Giralt, who was not a specialist in these cases, He assures that he took on the challenge of defending Ticas because he believed in his innocence… and because the best lawyers in doping cases at the international level did not go below $40,000, money that the Olympic Committee did not have. At the hearing, held in Lausanne. , Switzerland, the Portuguese prosecutor asked for four years of punishment for Ticas, which meant he would miss the Rio games and the following ones in Tokyo “In the end, with a lot of work, we managed to get him only one year. And everyone celebrated, but for me it was terrible because Pita was not going to be able to go to Rio, and to appeal would cost 10,000 dollars, and from where? “I wasn’t even getting paid,” Giralt recalls. Without the Games, without a scholarship and without sponsors, for Pita it was like a knockout blow: “I can’t describe the feeling of not being able to compete in those Games after winning the place because I felt like it was like a big rock had hit me and knocked me out.” I would have buried it completely.” “I didn’t even cry, but I was extremely upset and frustrated because I lost everything I had fought for… I was going to retire from archery, but my family was the first to support me not to throw away 15 years of sports career for something that It wasn’t my mistake,” Óscar, a true warrior, later admitted. “It was difficult to digest, but I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong and I turned the page, but without a scholarship I had to alternate my training with a job to earn an income.” , he added. This is how the El Salvador Olympic Committee announced his Olympic place. She tried to go to Tokyo, but couldn’t. It seemed that he also missed the possibility of going to Paris, especially when that possibility escaped him due to an arrow in Medellín last April. Nor had he achieved it in Antalya, Turkey, a few days ago… However, when he returned from the trip he found out the great news: they announced that he had his ticket to the Olympic Games, and he managed to fulfill “that dream that he had since he was a child.” “Sport always gives second chances. Always. Signed: Óscar Ticas.
2024-06-19 23:51:41
#Óscar #Ticas #warriors #redemption
