Interview with Schwazer: ‘Me, doping, Donati, Paris 2024’

The appointment is for 18.30, when Alex returns after a day’s work to his home in Racines, in the upper Valle d’Isarco, at a glance from Vipiteno. His “office” is the road, where he gives advice to amateur runners, those who dream of running a marathon under 5′ per kilometre. The road at the foot of the Alps where, for over 25 years, Alex Schwazer has been cultivating dreams. The road that saw him return with the Olympic gold medal in Beijing 2008, the sense of guilt for his confessed use of doping before London 2012, the torrid bitterness after the broken dream of Rio 2016, the anger at the disillusionment of Tokyo 2021 and the disenchanted waiting for the moment. Like all champions, he continues to feel like an athlete, to behave like an athlete by throwing wood on the sacred fire of hope, because Paris 2024 is an impossible project, but nothing can be excluded a priori in his life marked by the Olympic cycles.

It is there, in his house with a view of the mountain paradise, that Schwazer tells us how he is, while in the background there is the best soundtrack possible… the shouts of his children Ida, who is six years old, and his little brother Noah, two. With them is Kathy, who took Alex by the hand just before the 2016 Rio tsunami and she revealed to him that she was pregnant with Ida just before the suspension. Schwazer has been fighting, for over 7 years now, against what he considers a gigantic injustice. With Sandro Donati, the most credible and passionate athletics coach, he was working on the poetic path of redemption, when he was stopped by the positivity due to infinitesimal traces of synthetic testosterone. Alex and Sandro felt like victims of a conspiracy. The sports institutions (Federatletica Internazionale, Wada and Tas) do not think so and have always confirmed the disqualification until 7 July 2024, even when a judge from Bolzano, Walter Pelino, wrote in black and white on the dismissal order that it is believed “ascertained with a high degree of rational credibility that the urine samples have been altered in order to obtain positive results and therefore to obtain the disqualification and discredit of the athlete as well as of his coach Sandro Donati”. However, there is something new on the road to Paris 2024, which we have revealed on the pages of the Gazzetta. The AIU, the ethics body of the world athletics federation, considered Schwazer’s testimony, which unmasked an anti-doping rule violation, as “substantial aid”. According to the Wada regulation, he would therefore be entitled to a discount on the disqualification. “Everything you wrote is true – Alex confirms -. I can’t add anything else, because I have to respect the confidentiality agreement. I have answered all the questions that have been asked of me by Wada and I am waiting confidently, but without expectations. The my beliefs have already been refuted too many times, and so have my hopes… My testimony dates back to two years ago and since then I haven’t changed a thing in my life”.

But if the suspension or reduction of the disqualification arrives, would you be ready to return to being an athlete?

“I don’t even want to think about the Paris Olympics. It’s a thought that I postpone, because at the moment the date of my disqualification remains 7 July 2024. I’ve already missed at least two Olympic opportunities and I don’t want to, I don’t have to have any more illusions. And then I have to be realistic, I’m 38. I don’t want to go back to being a professional anymore, but I can’t hide from you that I’d like to go back, even just for a run in the mountains, one of the Sunday races in which the amateurs I train take part”.

However, they say that he remained an athlete, who still has a healthy weight and keeps in training.

“Anyone who has played sports at a high level, like me, remains an athlete forever. In the end, sport is a lifestyle that I cannot and do not want to give up. I weigh around 70 kilos, but because sometimes I only eat one meal a day… I’m not at all rigorous at the table. I cheat a lot. I’ve never obsessed over dieting even when I was a real athlete.”

“Six days a week. An hour or at most an hour and a half but at a high pace. By doing little, I try to do quality work. Sunday, however, is all about the family. I’ve changed in this too: my family is the priority, it comes first”.

Were you pleased with the success of the Netflix documentary film?

“Very very much! Everything is going way beyond my expectations. I was just hoping to have the time and the ability to explain myself so that even those who don’t live on sports could understand. And the result is quality”.

Did you feel abandoned by the world of athletics and by former champions?

“There are champions with whom I have good relations and they are very kind to me. One name above all: Deborah Compagnoni. My athletic colleagues, on the other hand, have never forgiven me for being positive at the epo. For them I have become “infrequent”. And I understand that.”

“Yes, absolutely. I paid and am still paying a very high price. Even those who continue to accuse me know that I paid a lot”.

Why does a champion with extraordinary potential fall into doping hell? What is the deeper motivation?

“In general, people only see the champion and struggle to understand that there may be a man behind it with all his weaknesses. After the gold in Beijing I was the victim of a severe depression. But I figured it out later. And only those who suffer or have suffered from depression know what it means. I always felt tired, I didn’t think, everything cost me effort. When I decided to dope, when I doped, I was desperate and saw no other way. In the end, for me, being found positive was a liberation. I was a prisoner of doping and the incredible thing is that I also went easy on the epo. What I was doing didn’t make any sense. Without serenity, I do not return. There are champions who need anger or hatred to give their best. I, on the other hand, need to feel calm and at peace with my conscience”.

Who was the strongest Schwazer athlete? The one in Beijing, the one that Rio was preparing? Or what Tokyo dreamed of?

“I’ve never gone as fast as I did in the spring of 2016. I could have won everything, from 10 to 50km, thanks to Donati who changed my training. In Beijing I would not have finished in the top 10 of the 20, while in 2016 I had become much more complete”.

Did you see Stano’s gold race in the Tokyo 20km?

“Honestly not. I’m only interested in Crippa, because he’s a champion I like. But athletics is the sport I follow the least. Instead, I know everything about skiing and cycling. These days I’m passionate about the duel between Vingegaard and Pogacar at the Tour. I’m on the Dane’s side, because I think he’s more of a cross-country skier, the strongest in the third week. But he is riding too much on Tadej’s wheels. The other day, for example, he should have responded to Adam Yates, or at least he should have tried a fit in Pogacar ”.

Worst moment of the past seven years?

“The journey to the Rio airport. The taxi was on the route of the 20 km that would have taken place the next day and I was returning to Italy with the weight of the 8-year disqualification. That sense of nausea, emptiness, I had never felt and I hope never to feel it again. In 2012 I knew I was wrong. It was my fault and I had to accept all the consequences. Not in Rio. That was an injustice.”

But Kathy was at home.

“What was waiting for Ida… My family saved me. She filled that infinite void. My sense of responsibility saved me. Instead of thinking about the injustice suffered from morning to night, I had to think about a job to give a future to our daughter, Ida, who arrived in March 2017″.

Who is Sandro Donati for you?

“An excellent coach, but now also a great friend. He has always been close to me. He could have distanced himself and dumped me, but instead he continued to fight with me, next to me. We lived the five years of the Bolzano process together… These are things that bind you, that go beyond the march”.

Was he the best coach of your career?

“Sandro is very competent and has a contagious passion. But I don’t forget that Sandro Damilano made me a walker. If I hadn’t gone to him in Saluzzo, I would never have become a professional athlete”.

Who are the others who have never abandoned her?

“Giulia Mancini, who has been helping me with communication since 2008, and my lawyer Gerhard Brandstatter. They have been close to me and continue to help me without even asking me for a euro…”.

The president of Coni, Giovanni Malagò, spoke of fury against him.

“I thanked him. It was not obvious that the president of Coni and a member of the Cio would say so. Malagò, however, said that there was fury, while the fury, unfortunately, still exists…”.

Do you expect help from the government, from sports minister Andrea Abodi?

“If he deems it appropriate, I will certainly be pleased, but I’m going ahead. Life has taught me that it’s better not to have expectations. In any case, I will continue to fight, so that sooner or later the truth will come to the surface and the injustice that Sandro Donati and I have suffered will be recognized”.