Cheating costly for brazen Puerta

On Tennis: Taking drugs to win in sport can be looked at in purely gambling terms. A roll of the dice for huge reward. These days you have got to believe that is the way some athletes look at their sport.

Winning global events is highly lucrative and gains large amounts of money in very narrow time spans. Getting to the final and particularly winning any of the four Grand Slam events in tennis means a player can almost name his price.

In tennis Ireland have had an honourable history, better than Irish athletics, better than swimming, better than rugby and better than show jumping. But world tennis does not have such a pristine record, as the recent past has shown. The most recent case of Argentina's Mariano Puerta, which was completed just a few weeks ago, is a case in point.

Puerta, a slightly overweight but bullishly strong clay court player, made it to the final of the French Open in 2005, where he was beaten by the then Spanish teenager Rafael Nadal. The 26-year-old reached the top 10 in the world for the first time following that French Open career peak. Puerta had risen to the top and was basking in the limelight at the pinnacle of a career curve that allowed him to earn $1,075,903 in prize money alone throughout 2005.

But even when he was playing Nadal in that Roland Garros final, few believed in the tennis player, who had an ex-Olympic weightlifter, Dario Lecman, as his fitness trainer.

Puerta had previously served a nine month suspension for testing positive for clenbuterol at Vin del Mar in February 2003 and here he was, just a year back from that ban and playing in the final of the biggest clay court and most physically demanding tennis tournament in the world.

Fortunately few others outside his closest group believed the South American either and when the testers came to him immediately after last year's match, it was really to keep him in check, as he had already offended. They didn't really expect to catch him red-handed again so soon.

But last month the independent Anti-Doping Tribunal ruled that Puerta, committed a doping offence under Article C.1 of the Programme (presence of a prohibited substance in a sample), in that very sample he provided on June 5th, 2005, immediately after the men's singles final.

This time he tested positive for a stimulant (etilefrine), a substance prohibited in competition under the Wada Code and the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme.

The independent Tribunal heard the matter in London on December 6th and 7th, 2005. They determined that Puerta's analytical positive result was caused by an inadvertent administration of etilefrine and therefore confirmed he had committed a doping offence and automatically disqualified the player's results at Roland Garros. The second ban also required forfeiture of ranking points, and prize money of €440,000 won in the singles and €3,282 in doubles competition.

Because it was his second offence, the Anti-Doping Tribunal rejected a defence of no fault or negligence, but accepted an alternative plea of no significant fault or negligence and imposed an eight-year suspension from competition, commencing on June 5th, 2005.

It also determined that the results he obtained in events subsequent to Roland Garros should also be disqualified and the ranking points and prize money of $330,925 gained in those events be refunded.

Tennis wanted to kick the player out of the game completely and the eight-year ban would have effectively ended his career.

But the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced the eight-year ban to two and now Puerta, if he wishes, can resume his career in June of next year.

Even setting aside any of the sponsorships that a top-10 player, would attract, Puerta lost a total prize fund of $443,282 from the French Open and a further $330,925 from tournaments subsequent to that. In total the International Tennis Federation relieved him of $774.207. Given that his career earnings up until the end of last year were $2,582,051, his punishment, apart from the ignominy of being seen as a cheat, has been the removal of almost one third of his entire career earnings.

Tennis is usually seen as a clean sport. The reality is that it has become increasingly physically demanding and increasingly lucrative. That combination alone means there are probably more Puertas than we think. But when they are caught, it tends to hurt.

FOLLOWING THE ninth Danone Masters event played in Castleknock last weekend Colin O'Brien is leading the ranking with 750 points followed by Stephen Nugent on 590 points and Conor Niland on 580 points.

In the women's race, two players are running away from the rest of the pack with Yvonne Doyle leading on 820 points and Mariana Levova chasing on 700. Levova is really the only player pushing Doyle with Cork's Emma Murphy in third place on 250 points.

The next event, the Wexford Harbour Open, runs over the bank holiday weekend but will be without several players, notably Conor Niland, who took off last week to play in Canada.

There are only three events left before the two groups of eight men and women play-off at Castleknock Tennis Club at the end of the month in the Masters Finals.