Victoria Garza Garza is 21 years old, studies at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (UANL) and is one of the best divers in Mexico, but since 2021 she began the process to become a naturalized citizen of the Dominican Republic, a country that offered her the necessary support to participate in international competitions such as the Olympic Games. She, along with Jonathan Ruvalcaba, 33, are the Mexicans who, due to the lack of opportunities and problems with sports institutions in Mexico, will represent the Caribbean country during the Paris 2024 games.
A sport with parallel stories
Victoria Garza won the overall silver medal in the 400 meters, which ensured her participation in the Junior Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia, in 2021, but the now defunct Mexican Swimming Federation (FMN) denied her the resources to go, since it only paid for the trip to the first place. The money was not enough to continue her professional preparation, in which international competitions are key to improving her performance, so she decided to accept the proposal of the Dominican Republic, which did not have female divers and was looking for talent outside the island.
Jonathan Ruvalcaba was on the verge of retiring when his name was not among those selected to represent Mexico at the 2016 Rio Olympics, so he began the process to become naturalized Dominican, a country he already represented in Tokyo 2020. Ruvalcaba trusts in the talent that exists in Mexico, but his problem with the Mexican Swimming Federation made him experience a blockade from competing at the international level and forced him to become naturalized Dominican. Paris 2024 will be the second time that the diver competes under that flag.
Another Mexican who arrives in Paris with a different nationality is Gabriela Schloesser-Bayardo, 30, who represented Mexico on the archery team in Rio 2016. Without any problems like the other athletes, Bayardo became a Dutch citizen after marrying her husband, Mike Schloesser, and in Tokyo 2020 she won the silver medal for the Netherlands and shared the podium with Mexicans Luis Álvarez and Alejandra Valencia, who won bronze.
The crisis of sport in Mexico
Complaints in Mexico about the lack of support for athletes are not new, but in recent years the crisis has intensified, as the National Sports Commission (Conade), chaired by Ana Gabriela Guevara, is embroiled in controversy over the lack of support for various disciplines, especially due to the cancellation of scholarships and resources.
One example is the Mexican artistic swimming team, which is returning to the Olympic Games after a 28-year absence since Atlanta 1996. This year it won gold at the world championships in Egypt, but to get that far it had to sell towels and seek support from companies like Telmex, which helped it get to the competition where it won. Another equally important victory is the lawsuit it won against Conade. The Commission had to pay part of the money it owed to the team members, however other swimmers remain without a penny, even after winning their lawsuits against the institution.
One of the most notorious cases against CONADE and the Mexican Olympic Committee (COM) is that of fencer Paola Pliego, who now competes for Uzbekistan. She was to participate in the Rio games in 2016, but according to a CONADE analysis, Pliego tested positive for modafinil, a substance used to treat excessive drowsiness and which is banned in the sport. The fencer denied the accusations, saying that due to the asthma she suffers from, the substance would have caused her to have a crisis or even die.
After an analysis by the International Fencing Federation in Germany, the result came back negative, but Pliego had already lost the opportunity to compete with Mexico in Rio, so in 2018 she sued Conade, the Mexican Olympic Committee and the Mexican Fencing Federation (FME) for negligence and moral damages. In 2019, she announced that she would no longer represent Mexico, but Uzbekistan, and after years of legal battles, in 2024 Conade agreed to pay 15 million pesos to the athlete for moral damages.
A well-known story
The talent drain in sport is nothing new. The first Mexican Olympic athlete to change his nationality also did so due to a lack of support from the Mexican Swimming Federation. Armando Fernández represented Mexico in water polo in Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976, but for the 1984 Los Angeles Games he did so with the West German delegation, with which he won the bronze medal. With that team Fernández also won a world water polo championship and fourth place in Seoul 1988.
In more recent years, diver Kevin Chavez won a bronze medal for Mexico at the 2013 World Swimming Championships, but when he suffered a ligament injury in his left knee in 2015, he undertook his recovery and rehabilitation in Australia, and then obtained his nationality and competed for that country, standing out from Rio 2016, until his retirement in November 2020.
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