2022-10-03
The Coordinator of the National Anti-Doping Commission of Costa Rica, Juan Carlos Baldizonhas ruled on the harsh sanction imposed by the FIFA to Honduran Henry Figueroa, who in December 2019 refused to submit to a doping test.
Henry Figueroa was sanctioned worldwide with a four-year suspension from all football-related activities from June 22, 2022 to June 22, 2024, as announced by the FIFA.
Baldizón gave an interview to the Tico portal, “The Tile”and fully explained why they decided to appeal the decision where Henry Figueroa He had been acquitted in the first instance on October 5, 2021.
“What we do as a national anti-doping organization is to open the investigation procedure of an anti-doping violation. In the first instance he was acquitted, what I did was I appealed the decision and that appeal was heard by a second instance and effectively resolved, as it says FIFAon September 23, when he notified us of the final resolution of the National Court of Doping Appeals”, he began by saying Juan Carlos Baldizon.
And he continued: “What they did is that they revoked the acquittal and heard the case again, they made a new analysis, a new assessment of the evidence and they considered that the athlete actually incurred the two faults that we had been accusing.”
About the offenses you committed Henry Figueroa, the coordinator of the Anti-Doping Commission said: “He violates the World Anti-Doping Code, rule 2.3 by failing to comply with the obligation to give the sample, that is, the refusal, to give the sample to an accredited anti-doping control officer and the other was manipulation of information at the time of providing the sample”.
He also added: “He gave fraudulent information (death of his mother); The court analyzed the case again and saw that the information was indeed fraudulent and imposed the sanction for the two infractions.”
It should be mentioned that Henry Figueroa can still appeal to this new punishment he has received from FIFAas reported Baldizón.
“The ruling is final at the national level. He has the appeal in the third instance before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, he has that right to appeal because international regulations establish it. He has 21 days to file the appeal, from September 23 when he was notified, they are calendar days (that is, Saturdays and Sundays are counted) ”, he explained.
More from Baldizón’s interview talking about Henry Figueroa:
Is there a chance that if you appeal, it will be ruled in your favor?
What I can tell you is that the ruling is very well supported, within the justification international arbitration resolutions of other athletes are cited.
Jurisprudence criteria from 2012 and 2016 are maintained and a recent one from the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang is cited, who also opposed taking a doping test.
The court has said that the only exceptions for not giving a sample are physical impossibility, that is, being in a hospital; hygiene conditions, that is to say, that the place does not meet the conditions to carry out the tests and the other is moral impossibility (where the privacy of the athlete is violated, there are many people in the place, it has windows and everyone is watching it , the principle of privacy is not guaranteed).
What does the term positive assumption mean?
This term is misused, because when a sample is sent for analysis by the World Anti-Doping Agency, an examination comes in which says that the sample that was taken contains prohibited substances.
Article 2.1 says that when there is no sampling, but there is an infraction, it is known as non-analytical cases and this is a non-analytical case, because the sample could not be collected.
Is it the most unusual case you have seen?
It is the most mediatic case and a little more complex, because there has been opposition from the athlete, FIFA and the World Anti-Doping Agency have been requesting information from the file.
We constantly see ourselves in these situations, athletes who avoid taking the tests, but they all apply in article 2.3 in avoiding rejecting the test, there are other excuses more elaborated by the athlete and they fall into fraudulent acts.