Diego Armando Maradona today would have received only three months of suspension and then would have returned to the field. Ale. Smooth as oil, without striking a blow. Instead – when they found him positive for cocaine in 1991 – the disqualification months were 18, his career derailed, the scandal was enormous. Thirty years have passed and these days a real revolution is taking place in the mined area where doping intrudes into sports.
The news has already sparked the controversy.
Wada, the World Anti-Doping Agency, very powerful planetary organism, the other day it issued a note, attached to the world code that regulates anti-doping training. And the note, valid since January, states that cocaine (and generic stimulants), ecstasy, diamorphine (which includes heroin and narcotics), and tetrahydrocannabinol (cannabis) are no longer equated with sports doping. The explanation given by the restless Wada, and not a little.
«Because it is frequently abused in society outside the sporting context». And therefore: if an athlete tests positive – let’s take an example – to cocaine, cannabis or ecstasy, he or she goes to a disqualification of only three months (in the past the disqualification was usually between 6 and 18 months). But – as per new legislation – “the disqualification can be reduced by one month if the athlete completes a verifiable rehabilitation process approved by Wada”.
In the world of football, the list of players arrested for drug use is long. The Roma player Claudio Caniggia was disqualified for 13 months, the Juventus player Mark Iuliano for two years, the Sampdoriano Francesco Flachi – a repeat offender – was forced to quit in the face of 12 years of disqualification, as well as the Brescia Jonathan Bachini who a short time before he had even arrived to play for the national team. But even in other sports, the doping law was inflexible. The world record holder of the high, Javier Sotomayor, in 1999 he was stopped for a year; the cyclist Luca Paolini (2015) for a year and a half.
The Wada was attacked from all sides. The world agency defended itself by arguing that the use of drugs is not always aimed at sports performance. Trivially: the athlete can “get high” – textual – “Within a specific time limit: 11.59 pm the previous day”. The fact remains that – to a large part of the public opinion – these new penalties seemed very light and requests for a revision of the rules are already underway.
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