Eufemiano Fuentes, a sports doctor tried for doping in the 2013 Operation Puerto, claims responsibility for having doped Cayetano Cornet, the national 400m record holder (44.96s, the first Spaniard to go under 45s) between 1989 and 2018 and, currently, at the age of 60, Chef de Mission of the Spanish Olympic team at the Paris Games. Fuentes claims that he administered hormones, growth hormone, testosterone, anabolic steroids…” He declared this in 2021, during an interview in which he answers a group of international journalists who filmed him with a hidden camera. In the same recording, which reached the German ARD journalist Hajo Seppelt a few months ago and which will be broadcast on Friday 19, Fuentes describes how he organised a doping programme “on the orders of the Spanish Government” in preparation for the Barcelona 1992 Games. “Do what you have to do, but we want medals,” Fuentes claims he was told. The only restrictions were that there should be “no positive results” and “no health problems”.
The text released yesterday by the German channel to promote the programme states that neither the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) nor the Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA) responded to its request for reactions, and this statement outrages Alejandro Blanco, president of the COE, almost more than information that makes him describe Fuentes with epithets that cannot be reproduced. “I don’t know what happened in 1992,” says Blanco, the top official of the Spanish Olympic movement since 2005. “But I do know that Eufemiano Fuentes only dedicates himself to dirtying up Spanish sport.”
Blanco not only says that he will not ask Cornet to resign from a position, that of Chef de Mission of the Spanish Olympic team, which he has held since the 2006 Turin Winter Games, but he also ardently defends his work. “He is the best Chef de Mission there is. My obligation is to defend Spanish sport and Cayetano Cornet,” says Blanco, who evidently finds it strange that only the name of the only athlete from that time (Cornet was not even a semi-finalist in Barcelona) with sporting responsibilities today appears in the preview, just eight days before the opening of the Paris Games.
RFEA President Raúl Chapado explains that last Thursday, July 11, the federation received an email in its generic email with two questions: if the federation knew if Eufemiano Fuentes had treated athletes before 1988, when the president was Juan Manuel de Hoz, and then, in 1992, with José María Odriozola as president. “I wasn’t there then… I don’t even know what happened, of course.”
Through the COE, Conet has announced that he will not make any statements.
“But he only mentioned Cornet?” says an old Spanish athlete who knows all the dealings of the 69-year-old Canarian doctor with his sport and with Barcelona 92. He says this with irony, because since his arrest in 2006 in Operation Puerto, in which more than 200 bags of blood prepared for the best cyclists in the world were seized, such as Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Liberty and Jorg Jacksche, Santiago Botero, Paco Mancebo, and the Kelme and Liberty riders, Eufemiano Fuentes has threatened to tell everything since his entry into athletics in the 80s, and he has never said anything except in dribs and drabs.
In 2013, during the Operation Puerto trial, Eufemiano Fuente’s lawyer, José Miguel Lledó, sent several media outlets a two-page document entitled: “Possible topics to be discussed in an in-depth interview with Eufemiano Fuentes.” Most of them referred to Fuentes’ doctor-doping relationship with some of the great figures of Spanish sport. For example, “How was the first Olympic medal in Los Angeles 84 created? My relationship with the medalist” [José Manuel Abascal, bronce en 1.500 metros] and the other Olympic finalists. Position he held at that time, both in the CSD and in federations”. Or, “How the medalists of Barcelona 92 prepared themselves, what information they had to better plan their preparation. How they went from tolerance to success”. Or, “My medical relationship with the winners of the London marathon”, a race won by the Spaniard Abel Antón, senator for the Partido Popular, in 1998… Or, “My relationship as a doctor for football teams (1st and 2nd Spanish Division) (…) How I prepared a team to play in the Champions League and European competitions”.
To the journalists who were interested and requested an audience, Lledó replied: “I confirm that it would be possible to carry out said interview next week,” the lawyer wrote to one of them. “Although I can tell you in advance that given the interest aroused and the number of offers and requests we are receiving, we are listening to said economic offers to make our decisions.”
No interview came out of that offer. Eufemiano Fuentes remained silent except for an appearance on Jordi Évole’s programme a few years ago in which he said that among the athletes he had doped was Fermín Cacho, the Olympic 1,500m champion in Barcelona.
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