Mariano Puerta

An International Tennis Federation tribunal has completed its hearing following an allegation of drug abuse
against Mariano Puerta following a positive test for a heart stimulant, etilefrine, after the final of the 2005 French Open.

The tribunal found that Puerta had become accidentally contaminated as a result of
his wife taking a hypertension medicine containing etilefrine and that:

"The amount of etilefrine in his body was too small to have any effect on his performance"

They also announced:

"We accept that...the player's contamination...was inadvertant."

and also accepted that Puerta was guilty of:

"no significant fault or negligence"

Immediately after announcing that he had done nothing significantly wrong, they proceeded to ban him
from tennis for eight years - an effective lifetime ban for the 27-year-old professional.

They also ordered the forfeiture of his $500,000+ French Open prize money and the
$330,000 earned since.

Do these people have any conception of fairness or justice?
They agree that he did nothing significantly wrong and then fine him almost $1million and destroy his career..?
He knew for a fact that he would be tested after the French Open final.
It is also common knowledge that etilefrine is a known and readily detected stimulant.
Only an idiot would take such a substance on the day that he knew he would be tested.
Only a complete idiot would take a dose that would be detected but was 50 times less than that
determined to have a significant performance enhancing effect.

Even the ITF's counsel suggested to the tribunal that this might be a truly exceptional
case where the player had succeeded in demonstrating no fault and deserving of no punishment.

The tribunal agreed that it felt very uncomfortable about its decision, that it made it with "a heavy heart" - but did it anyway.
It even expressed the opinion that Puerta did not deserve to suffer so severely and
would welcome Puerta appealing their ruling...

How can fairness be served when a tribunal makes such a decision while, at the same time, making
all manner of expressions of regret, reluctance and the hope that it will be reversed.

They said:

"These rules can, as in this case, operate very harshly against individuals. The result is particularly harsh here...
and indeed in the present case the dose accidentally ingested was so minute it could not have
enhanced the player's performance."

How do you ignominiously end a player's career and fine him $1 million
for something done accidentally and that had no possibility of having any beneficial effect?

The tribunal's decision was welcomed by the aptly-named head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Dick Pound:

"You're dealing with somebody who's tested positive twice in less than two years and clearly doesn't think the rules apply to him".

Clearly, lack of fault - or even negligence - is of no concern to this self-righteous individual.

Puerta's earlier positive test?

An ATP tribunal determined that Puerta had been prescribed medicine by his physician to treat an acute asthma attack
and that its use had no performance-enhancing effects.

Then, in a show of fair-mindedness only rivaling the ITF's, the ATP then fined him and banned him from tennis for nine months.

(I was under the impression that the ATP was the Association of Tennis professionals - dedicated to the interests of its members...)

How can someone be banned for taking medicine prescribed as medically necessary by his own physician???

Even chief witch-hunter Dick Pound's WADA has a Therapeutic Use Exemption which allows athletes to use medicines that:

treat a significant health problem (acute asthma attacks certainly fall into that category);
do not provide significant performance enhancements (found to be the case by the ATP panel);
cannot be replaced by other medicines (a player's doctor is surely the best judge of what is appropriately prescribed).

Which makes intolerant Dick's condemnation of Puerta even more difficult to comprehend
and the WADA's doping rules - adopted by the ITF - totally absurd, unfair
and even unlawful as they take no account of the proportionality of sentence to fault.

This is not justice!

Hopefully, Mariano Puerta will receive a fairer hearing when he takes the ITF to court...

[ click here for the full text of the tribunal's ruling ]