Sandro Donati

Sandro Donati (2009)

Alessandro "Sandro" Donati (born June 14, 1947 in Monte Porzio Catone ) is an Italian sports scientist , advisor to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and former athletics trainer .

Activity as a trainer

Sandro Donati was born to a farmer near Frascati . In his youth he was a good middle-distance runner himself , his career aspiration was a coach. In 1981, after seven years of training with two degrees, he became Italian national coach for the runners over 800 and 1500 meters. Shortly after taking over as coach of the Italian association took Professor Francesco Conconi , a former amateur - cyclist and biochemist , contact Donati and offered him his services in the form of blood doping -Programms to, but what these declined. After the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984 , he was replaced as a coach for the middle distance - in Donati's opinion, so as not to stand in the way of further attempts with doping agents - and he took over the training of the short distance runners.

At the 1987 World Championships in Rome there was a scandal because the long jump of the Italian athlete Giovanni Evangelisti was measured at 8.38 meters, with which he would have won the bronze medal. In retrospect, it turned out through computer evaluations, among others by the German trainer Helmar Hommel , that Evangelisti's last jump could have been a maximum of 7.80 meters, so that the referee made a deliberate wrong decision in favor of her compatriot Evangelisti, who later returned his medal had to be assumed. Allegedly, this was done on the instructions of the President of the Italian Athletics Federation (FIDAL), Primo Nebiolo , but in fact without the knowledge of Evangelisti. Nebiolo then had to resign from his office. It was Donati who first expressed official doubts about the correctness of the measurement and carried out the investigation via video; then he was dismissed as national coach.

Anti-doping activities

In 1989, Sandro Donati wrote a book about Conconi's practices ( Campioni senza valori , German "Winner without values"), but it was not delivered because the publisher had been bribed, as Donati later found out. In 1992 he nevertheless became head of the Science Commission of the National Olympic Committee of Italy (CONI) and two years later wrote a dossier on doping practice in Italian sport for the President of CONI, Mario Pescante , and for its Secretary General Raffaele Pegnozzi . He asked the two officials to pass on his findings so that there could be charges, but they did nothing. In the dossier you can find among others, in addition to Conconi (who at that time sat together with Donati on the Anti-Doping Committee of CONI) the names of the doctor Michele Ferrari , the (2014 still incumbent) President of the Italian Cycling Federation, Renato Di Rocco, and by racing drivers including Moreno Argentin , Guido Bontempi , Mario Cipollini , Francesco Moser and Maurizio Fondriest .

At the end of 1996 the dossier was published in the media worldwide. The result was that Donati's working conditions steadily deteriorated. The budget of his department was cut from two million to 50,000 euros, of 42 employees only two remained, which were also cut by their colleagues at CONI, and at times the telephone lines were cut, according to Donati. “In September 2000, the President of the World Cycling Federation UCI Hein Verbruggen asked CONI at a press conference to withdraw my work assignment because I had advised against putting Marco Pantani on for the Olympic team in Sydney (he had catastrophic blood values ​​that were more for you a month's stay in hospital as training for the Olympic Games). ”Between August 1998 and October 2000, Donati continued, the former representatives of the anti-doping laboratory in Rome and the directors of CONI threatened him eleven times with suing him which never happened. Attempts were also made to manipulate the urine sample of one of Donati's female athletes in order to make him untrustworthy. In addition, surveys revealed that there were no doping cases in Italian football because the players were almost never tested. The strict anti-doping law in Italy from 2000 is attributed not least to Donati's efforts.

In November 2000, the Play the Game conference took place in Copenhagen , an initiative that fights for sport without doping and corruption. Donati was supposed to be one of the main speakers, but he canceled two days earlier because CONI had refused to give its necessary consent to his participation in the conference. It was only after a protest from conference participants and a fax from one of the organizers that CONI General Secretary Pagnozzi was “reluctantly” to give his consent. “The permission came so late that we had to put Donati as the very last item on our program list. After the drama about the world's leading doping hunter, it was an unforgettable final with standing applause from the participants. ”In 2007, Donati, who left CONI in 2006, received an award from Play the Game .

In October 2012, Italian cross-country skier Manuela Di Centa announced that she was suing Donati for defamation for accusing her of doping in a documentary. However, she never put this announcement into practice.

Today (as of 2014) Sandro Donati works, among other things, as a consultant to WADA.

Publications (selection)

• L'organizzazione dell'allenamento . Società stampa sportiva, Rome 1983.
• Campioni senza valore . Ponte alle Grazie, Florence 1989.
• Lo sport del doping. Chi lo subisce, chi lo combatte . EGA-Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Rome 2012, ISBN 8865790334 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ La scheda di Donati - Consulente dell'agenzia mondiale antidoping ( Italian ) casadellalegalita.info. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} The Man who knows too much. (No longer available online.) Chris Harrison writing, March 2003, archived from the original on February 26, 2014 ; accessed on January 28, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Michael Reinsch: The giant sentence from Turin. FAZ, March 11, 2009, accessed on January 28, 2014 . 
4. ^ Ralf Meutgens : Doping in cycling . Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-7688-5245-6 , p. 71 f .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Ralf Meutgens : Doping in cycling . Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-7688-5245-6 , p. 74 f .
6. ^ Jens Sejer Andersen: Play the Game. Reactions of a global awareness industry . In: Jens Weinreich (Ed.): Corruption in Sport: Mafiosis Dribblings. Organized silence . Leipzig 2006, p. 79 f .
7. ↑ Sandro Donati wins Play the Game Award 2007. Play the Game, November 1, 2007, accessed on January 30, 2014 (English). 
8. ↑ Stefano Boldrini: Doping - Donati: "La confessione sia totale ??". Gazzetta dello Sport, May 8, 2007, accessed January 30, 2014 . 
9. ↑ Manuela Di Centa is suing WADA consultants. (No longer available online.) Handelsblatt, October 4, 2012, archived from the original on February 2, 2014 ; accessed on January 28, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Sport invernali: Manuela Di Centa, quella candidatura con l'ombra del doping. Sport e Motori, March 18, 2014, accessed December 12, 2014 (Italian). 
11. ^ Donati Report on Trafficking. WADA, October 2009, accessed January 28, 2014 . 

Web links

• “Doping - a collective madness” - Interview with Sandro Donati. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 25, 2000, accessed on January 28, 2014 . 
• Sandro Donati. Play the Game, accessed January 28, 2014 .