|
French Open finalist Puerta banned for 8 years
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-22 09:09
LONDON - Mariano Puerta was a long shot when he reached the French Open final
in June. Now, the Argentine is facing the longest doping ban in tennis history.
Argentina's Mariano
Puerta reacts as he plays Spain's Rafael Nadal during their final match of
the French Open tennis tournament, at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris,
Sunday June 5, 2005. [Reuters] | The 27-year-old
Puerta was banned for eight years Wednesday for his second doping offense,
effectively ending his career. He is the first tennis player to receive a ban of
more than two years.
"I find it extraordinary that it could ever be thought satisfactory that a
person's livelihood can be terminated in circumstances such as these," Puerta
said in a statement.
Puerta tested positive for the cardiac stimulant etilefrine after losing to
Rafael Nadal in the French Open final on June 5.
The three-man International Tennis Federation tribunal said the drug
apparently came from effortil, a medication Puerta's wife takes for
hypertension.
"We accept on the balance of probabilities that the player's contamination
with effortil was inadvertent," said the ITF tribunal, which met Dec. 6-7. "The
amount of etilefrine in his body was too small to have any effect on his
performance."
The ITF said Puerta will be disqualified from the French Open and his results
nullified, but he will keep his place in the record books as a finalist.
Puerta was banned for nine months in 2003 for using clenbuterol, an asthma
medication with some steroid-like properties, and faced a possible lifetime ban
for a second infraction. But an ITF tribunal said he was given a lighter penalty
because the positive result in Paris was inadvertent.
Puerta did not dispute the drug was in his body, and the ITF accepted his
plea of "no significant fault or negligence."
The eight-year ban is retroactive to June 5. Puerta has three weeks to
appeal, but said he would not make a decision before the end of the year. The
ITF panel said it expected the case to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The ITF said it was unclear how and when Puerta ingested the drug, but "we
cannot see how it need have occurred at all if the player had exercised the
utmost caution."
"My position has always been that I did not deliberately or knowingly ingest
any prohibited substance," Puerta said. "The tribunal accept that the substance
... entered my system entirely inadvertently and without my knowledge as a
result of accidental contamination by an over-the-counter medicine which my wife
was taking."
|
