Donati: “Schwazer is the victim of unreliable institutions. Now a new investigation”

The power of truth. Two words with which Sandro Donati explains the success of the Netflix docuseries that he tellsThe Alex Schwazer case. “It was a transparent, real, human story, without lies. People probably understood this”. Donati, a life lived to the max against doping, the coach who guided Alex Schwazer’s new career and who didn’t abandon him after the controversial and always denied positivity to testosterone, hasn’t stopped fighting against what he considers a gigantic injustice.

Donati, what does this story teach?

“It shows how deviant some sports institutions are. It was already clear when two high-profile people left Wada. Jack Robertson was chief inspector and protagonist of the Russia investigation, while Rob Kohler’s role was deputy general manager. One of the problems what was relieved was the lack of protection of the athletes who reported.And on this point disturbing things have happened: it took a few years and over 200 emails for Mr and Mrs Stepanov (the best known regrets of the state doping scandal) to have an answer. And what about the discus girl Darya Pishchalnikova who told the whole doping system to IAAF and Wada with an email that the heads of these two institutions sent to the Russian leaders? An act of great servility and cowardice”.

However, in recent years the fight against doping has made great strides forward: research, new methods, analysis, technology. Where does all this go to?

“A lot of it is scripted. There is never an increase in the number of positives. Indeed, we are witnessing a worrying growth in certain performances. I am thinking of throwing in athletics. Once upon a time only with anabolic steroids they did certain measures and now how do they they do?”.

You spoke of some deviant sports institutions. How big is the problem?

“But even a child realizes that in certain professional sports cases of doping do not emerge and nor could they emerge: no one loses a business of tens of millions worth a football player for a positive anti-doping control. And the presumed equality between the high-level professional and the high-level amateur? But where are these professionals found to be positive? For professionals, indeed for all athletes, we need to think of a more humane system that has a large impact on prevention. For example, by studying an index individual of normality: if you exceed it, you will be stopped”.

But after all, isn’t it already there with the biological passport?

“And how is it used? There is an absolute opacity of the statistics. They tell you the numbers of the checks, but which categories of athletes are the checks aimed at? For example, the surprise ones, how do they affect high-level athletes? And if you do two missed test, does another check immediately start or or does the third one never arrive? What about therapeutic exemptions? Are they verified with weighting? And then the fundamental question: can an international federation control itself?”.

But on the one hand you denounce the absence of guarantees for Schwazer and the athletes, on the other you say that the system prefers not to strike.

“We are faced with a completely self-referential system characterized by self-protection. If an athlete has the courage to challenge these powers, he goes to justice bodies that the sports institutions themselves have appointed: for example, the TAS referees are appointed by the IOC and by international federations. There is no impartiality. And do you know how much it costs to appeal to the CAS or to the Swiss Federal Court?”

We have read of a figure close to 50 thousand euros.

“At least. So many athletes give up because they can’t, ruthless system. When you are dealing with an international federation, they all have the cards. Do you remember what happened in July seven years ago? The CAS fixed the hearing, but the IAAF said he needed to study the documents. But if they had kept the positivity report for 40 days! Yet another element in that mountain of strange things in the Schwazer affair. The transport inspector seriously contradicted himself, In fact, does the second verbalization contradict the first? In a normal situation, this would have been enough to cancel everything, but gentlemen didn’t bat an eyelid. This is currently the implementation of the controls: there is the sampling, sample A, sample B, after which the inspector leaves with both bottles and nothing remains in the athlete’s hands”.

“The athlete has the right to have a third test tube deposited in an accredited laboratory that is inaccessible to the athlete and the control body. The system is ready to reply: but we guarantee. But the numerous scandals say something else: if the story of the Iaaf has shown that there was a trade of positivity consisting in blackmailing the athletes”.

Many people say in the face of the Schwazer case “something is not right”, indeed a lot is not right. But one also wonders: is it possible that all this was organized to hit just one athlete?

“It is an objection from those who have not investigated the facts. I think that the institutions involved are stuck with the choice of denying everything. To break this circle, we needed a responsible person who said enough, even if only on the basis of the falsehoods of the reports of the chain of custody. It could be canceled due to a formal defect and a commission of inquiry could be formed”.

Wada, however, was a turning point at the beginning.

“Only at the beginning, then this body no longer worked. I asked several times about those Russia loans to Wada from 2013 to 2015”.

“But if they are written in the financial statements. Attention: extraordinary funding. Extraordinary for what?”.

Donati, after almost seven years of this long story, what are you hoping for?

“I hope that a body outside the sports system, for example set up within the European Union, can start an independent investigation, but I know it is a utopia, also because politics has now become a trifle”.