When an Olympic bronze is made to wait nine years

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  • The IOC has just awarded Majorcan paddler Sete Benavides a medal at the London 2012 Games following the official disqualification of Lithuanian Shuklin for doping.

  • “Now I would like the institutions to give me what I lost at the time and that it stayed there.”

“Doping hurts those of us who are training by breaking our backs, those of us who try to be better without cheating and those of us who believe that they have beaten us fairly.” TO seven benavides (Pollença, Mallorca, 30 years old) the doping of an adversary deprived him in London 2012 of the glory of getting on the podium, of hanging himself a bronze medal; of interviews, of being covered the next day in all the newspapers, of being on the news and being recognized as an Olympic medalist with all that it entails.

The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has taken nine years to award him bronze in the C1 200 canoeing event at the London Games. Last Friday the third place was made official after the disqualification for doping of the Lithuanian canoeist Yevgeny Shuklin, second in the test. Reanalyses of the urine samples found that he had used testosterone to get on the podium. “He was the first Olympic medalist in my sport disqualified for doping,” he says. Benavides.

On Friday the IOC reassigned the London medals again. Apart from Benavides, Ruth Beitia won bronze in the high jump due to the disqualification of the Russian Svetlana Shkolina. A Benavides no one has called him to give him the good news. He found out thanks to a Mallorcan journalist. Nothing more. “Since 2019 it was known that the medal belonged to me but the various appeals filed by the offender had delayed the award.”

But it was not just waiting and making a hole in the living room where the trophies are kept to hang the medal in a distinguished place. There was so much more. “They took away the moment of living the glory in london, that would have come in my beginnings as an athlete. Now I do not know what it is to get on an Olympic podium but at least justice has been done because cheats have no place in sport. “

A medal is accompanied by scholarships, cash prizes and, above all, in a sport such as canoeing, away from the media impact of other specialties, from the possibility of negotiating upward contracts with private sponsors. “It is not the same to be a diploma as an Olympic medalist. Now what obviously I would like to be recover what belonged to me at that time. Apart from the money, it would have been an Olympic bronze for almost ten years. You lose recognition, more doors open for you with a bronze, the repercussion you get. Now I just want the institutions to give me what I lost at the time and that it stayed there. “

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Because on Friday he not only won an Olympic bronze but also two other medals of the same metal in the 2014 World Cup and in the 2013 European Championship, also won by Shuklin at a time when it should have been sanctioned.

Benavides He could not attend the Tokyo Games since his distance, the C1 200 (in a canoe, not a canoe, where the paddler competes on his knee in the boat) was no longer on the Olympic program. He was fourth in the distance in Beijing 2016 and is now preparing in the company of Toni Segura for the C2 500 in Paris 2014. “In 2012 my sports cycle began. Since then I have won medals in Europeans and World Cups but I still needed to close the circle with the bronze that will now be awarded to me.” He does not yet know who will give it to him, or how, and if it will be a private or public act. Meanwhile, he continues training every day at Lake Esperança in Alcúdia, although he knows that since this week he has been doing it as an Olympic medalist.



Reference-www.elperiodico.com

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