Twenty-three years after a doping case in which his innocence was proven, but which ruined part of his career, the Argentine Guillermo Coria sees what happens to the Italian Jannik Sinner and regrets: he would have liked to receive the same treatment.
“I feel like I didn’t have the same treatment as him,” Coria, current captain of the Argentine Davis Cup team, told CLAY.
Coria, who became number three in the world ranking in 2004, tested positive for nandrolone in a test carried out in April 2001. Nandrolone entered his body through a contaminated vitamin supplement. Coria sued the Universal Nutrition firm for ten million dollars, but finally reached an out-of-court settlement.
“Good luck,” the judge told Coria at that hearing in 2007 in the New Brunswick Court, in the US state of New Jersey.
“Positive doping killed me, I was at my best, then I came back with hatred,” Coria would say years later on Argentine television. In those years, a prestigious Italian journalist had given him a malicious nickname: Nandrolino.
«I spent my savings to bring a team of psychologists from Spain to treat me and show my personality, I also hired a lie detector in the United States, I had a genetic study that showed through my hair what I was consuming, I showed how the drug entered my body, through a vitamin complex, which was not to take advantage, but when I arrived at the trial in Miami it was already decided,” he added.
The case of Sinner, world number one, has points of contact with that of Coria, but for the moment a different path: the Italian was recognized that he had no desire to dope and was allowed to continue playing. Coria was also recognized as accidental in the case, but the Argentine was sanctioned for two years, although the ATP later reduced the period to seven months.
Sinner, who twice tested positive for the anabolic clostebol, was allowed to continue playing, although the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recently appealed that decision and is demanding a sanction.
At the time, the sanction was a blow to Coria, who at the age of 19 was on the rise on the circuit and fell to 198th place in the world ranking. He would then come close to winning the Roland Garros title in the memorable 2004 final with Gaston Gaudio and playing in a notable Italian Open final with Rafael Nadal in 2005, but the toll he paid for that sanction was very hard.
“It was a difficult stage for me and I closed it, because I didn’t have a good time at all,” Coria told CLAY.
As captain of the Argentine Davis Cup team, Coria will lead his players on November 21 in Malaga for the quarterfinals. The rival? Italy, the country of Sinner.
“The only thing I ask is that the treatment is equal for everyone,” concluded Coria, who at 42 years old is married to his long-time partner, Carla, and has two children.
