From Paolo Guerrero's flu tea to the penis extender of basketball player Roburt Saille, we review the arguments of several athletes after being discovered

After the confirmation of the sanction of the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) to the Peruvian soccer player Paolo Guerrero, who will miss the 2018 World Cup of Russia for consumption of Benzoylecgonine, despite assuring that it was dissolved in a tea he took for the flu, in LatinAmerican Post we review the excuses of the athletes to try to justify that they did not doped themselves consciously.

Leer en español: Las excusas más insólitas de los atletas que han dado positivo por dopaje

In addition to the case of Guerrero, there is also the process against the British cyclist Chris Froome, who has not yet received the verdict and who is actually participating in the Giro de Italia 2018. The triple champion of the Tour de France argued the excess of salbutamol due to medical treatment to control asthma during the celebration of the Vuelta a España 2017. Former cyclist Greg Lemond did not hide his annoyance to what he considered a cheap excuse from Froome.

Who does not remember that verdict in 2010, in which it was pointed out that the Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador had involuntarily received in his urine and through a solomo IGNORE INTOxicated the prohibited substance clenbuterol, for which he paid sanction for two years? Here we review other incredible cases.

Read also: Russia 2018: a World Cup without stars? These 5 figures will not be attending

The incredible excuses

• The American Roburt Sallie, educated at the University of Memphis, and former player of the basketball team Tarragona in Spain, is an unusual protagonist of these excuses. Sallie decided not to go to the CAS to counteract the positive testosterone that occurred in an anti-doping control in December 2017. According to the athlete, the positive result was due to a drug that he took to lengthen the penis and that contained the prohibited anabolic.
• Ross Rebagliati, the first Olympic snowboarding gold, tested positive at the Winter Olympics in Nagano 1998. Rebagliati claimed that he spent a lot of time "surrounded by habitual users of marijuana". His medal was returned, since 'cannabis' was not included in the list of prohibited substances in that year.
• The jumper Javier Sotomayor tested positive for cocaine in the 1999 Pan-American Games. The Cuban declared that he had only seen cocaine in the movies, but his head of state, Fidel Castro, went further and pointed out that everything was due to sabotage by the CIA who wanted to poison him.
• Five players from the North Korean soccer team at the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2011, tested positive for doping by 14 different types of steroids. The excuses that were given from the Federation of the country were incredible. According to them, a lightning bolt fell near where the players trained and they were left in shock. To recover them, the athletes were treated with the liquid from a glandular bag that has a deer in the belly that lives in the regions of Siberia and Nepal.
• Dennis Mitchell, one of the best sprinters of the nineties (bronze at the Tokyo World Championship in 1991 and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics), tested positive for testosterone in 1998 and said that "the night before he had made love four times" after having ingested several beers. The US federation exculpated him, but the International punished him with two years.
• An excuse for treason was given by Dieter Baumann, Olympic champion of Barcelona at 5,000 meters, when he tested positive in 1999 for Nandrolone. His defense was that some enemy of his had injected that substance IGNORE INTO the toothpaste.
• Nandrolone was also found in the organism of tennis player Richard Gasquet. The Frenchman said he was innocent and that his positive result was due to a kiss, indicating that he had been at a party with women who were consuming and that one of them would have caused the adverse result.

You might be interested: Latin American soccer promises who did not meet expectations

Different cases, different answers

• At the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988, Ben Johnson triumphed in the 100-meter final over arch-rival Carl Lewis, and even imposed a world record of 9.79 seconds. However, his control tested positive for stanozolol, an anabolic substance. The first version that emerged in this regard was that it was a 'trap' against him with some beers that he drank. However, over time, Johnson confessed: "I did it because I wanted to beat Lewis. Also, I've been doing it for years."
• It was the year 1994 and Diego Maradona was rejuvenated at the World Cup in the United States. The player tested positive for pseudoephedrine after the match between Argentina and Nigeria in the group stage. With 34 years, Maradona was withdrawn from the contest by the same Association of Argentine Football (AFA). His subsequent statements were "they cut my legs, not only me, but my family and all my colleagues, I can only tell Argentina that I did not drug myself".

Latin American Post | Onofre Zambrano
Translated from “Las excusas más insólitas de los atletas que han dado positivo por dopaje”