Rafael Nadal became champion at Roland Garros with his physique on the limit. Photo: REUTERS / Benoit Tessier.
The CEO of the World Anti-Doping Agency (AMA), Olivier Niggli, today defended the Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal after the criticisms appeared in the press and on the French cycling world, stressing that the infiltrations to which the athlete suffered the left foot are allowed.
Nadal’s anesthetic injections to combat foot pain “are not on the list of banned products (by AMA), as it is estimated that they do not improve sports performance and are not harmful,” Niggli said in an interview with Swiss RTS television.
After the triumph at Roland Garros, which consolidates the Majorcan as the winner of the most Grand Slam titles in the history of men’s tennis, several French cyclists protested against Nadal’s therapeutic practice, ensuring that he was not allowed.
Niggli said that the debate on infiltrations should not be brought to the field of doping but to medical ethicsin which one might ask “is it acceptable for an elite athlete to have to undergo injections before a match”.
“Nadal has won 14 titles at Roland Garros, and if the previous 13 were achieved without the need for those injections, it is likely that the 14th was not thanks to them,” he concluded.
Nadal, on crutches, two days after the victory at Roland Garros.
Other testimonies in support of Nadal
Even the Spanish Society of Sports Medicine today released an information note in which it assures that “anesthetic infiltrations are therapeutic procedures of wide and ancient use, both in sports and at work and in many others”.
He added that “infiltration into cycling is not prohibited by the International Cycling Union, as has been reported by some athletes of French nationality” and stated that “relating concepts of infiltration and doping is not correct and is perhaps destined to sow doubts about the lawfulness of the results of some athletes “.
Source: Clarin
