LIMA, Peru — Peruvians celebrated on Thursday after the temporary suspension of a controversial doping ban on Paolo Guerrero, the captain and star player of their national soccer team, allowing him to play in the World Cup this summer after all.
The South American nation of 31 million will be returning to the sport’s highest stage after a 36-year absence. The team is officially ranked 11th in the world, above previous winners including England, Italy and Uruguay and could be capable of going far in the competition.
But the elation in qualifying for the tournament had turned to bitterness and anger after Guerrero was slapped with a six-month ban for doping that has been internationally viewed as unjust and even perverse.
Guerrero tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite derivative of cocaine and its key ingredient coca, while playing last fall with his national team against Argentina and Colombia.
However, both FIFA — the governing body for football, as the sport is referred to here and throughout much of the world — and the World Anti-Doping Agency or WADA, which prosecuted Guerrero, accept his explanation that he inadvertently consumed trace elements of coca tea, a common beverage in Andean nations, when he was served an herbal infusion at his team’s hotel.
The case shines a spotlight on anti-doping policies in professional sports, raising the possibility that the crackdown on drug offenders has gone too far and is now punishing the innocent. It also highlights what critics say is the outdated, puritanical approach of sports administrators to treat recreational drugs such as cocaine and cannabis, which do not improve performance and are, in the case of cannabis, being legalized or decriminalized in various nations and U.S. states.
Ruling on Guerrero’s appeal against the WADA ban, the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration in Sport, last week extended his playing prohibition from six to 14 months despite accepting that the player “did not attempt to enhance his performance by ingesting the prohibited substance” and that his culpability was “not significant.”
That ruling was temporarily suspended on Thursday by Switzerland’s Supreme Court, meaning that Guerrero will be able to compete in the World Cup after all. However, he will have to serve the remainder of the ban after the World Cup competition ends in July, pending a definitive ruling from the Swiss judiciary.
In a statement released before Thursday’s ruling, the international soccer players’ union FIFPro described Guerrero’s punishment as “unfair and disproportionate, and the latest example of a World Anti-Doping Code that too often leads to inappropriate sanctions.”
It added: “In the light of this case and other recent decisions, FIFPro is calling for FIFA and other football stakeholders to immediately review how to change anti-doping rules in football so that they serve the best interests of the game and protect the fundamental rights of players.”
Tellingly, the captains of Australia, Denmark and France — the three squads Peru will be competing against in the World Cup group stage — had issued an open letter through the union calling for Guerrero to be allowed to play.
“It would be plainly wrong to exclude him from what should be a pinnacle of his career — an achievement he has worked so hard for, and for so many years — on the basis of a finding which confirms that he did not intend to cheat and did not intend to enhance his performance with prohibited substances,” the three players wrote.
For Peru, there could have been no harder blow than losing Guerrero. The 34-year-old striker is widely viewed as the country’s best player. His 32 goals for the national team, some of which proved vital in helping Peru qualify for the World Cup in Russia, are an all-time record and he is a two-time Copa America golden boot winner. He is currently a standout at Flamengo, Brazil’s largest club, and the consensus among soccer pundits is that the only reason he is not regarded among the world’s elite goal scorers is that he does not ply his trade in one of Europe’s major leagues.
News of Guerrero’s ban had prompted angry protests here and even unlikely accusations of conspiracies against Peru. President Martin Vizcarra appeared for a photo opportunity with Guerrero to show his support.
Peruvians have watched on in envy and unrequited longing for nearly four decades as their closest neighbors — and bitterest sporting rivals — Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and, of course, Brazil have all qualified for the World Cup, in some cases repeatedly.
When Peru finally booked its ticket to the tournament for the first time since 1982 by defeating New Zealand in a playoff last fall, the government declared a national holiday. Since then many have been struggling to wrap their heads around the injustice meted out to their captain, which has forced him to sit out the 2017-2018 club season with Flamengo.
One of them is Heber Campos, a law professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, who believes that Guerrero has a good chance of definitively overturning the CAS ruling in his planned appeal in Switzerland after the World Cup.
“The law punishes negligence but it doesn’t define negligence. The CAS then interpreted negligence as simply testing positive,” says Campos. “That is not just Draconian. It is also unreasonable.”
Campos adds that the courts need to exercise more common sense and discretion. “There needs to be a human perspective. These athletes are not machines. They also have rights, including the right to work, the right to protect their image and their reputation.”
Guerrero’s ban also highlights what many South Americans regard as hypocritical attitudes in the West toward coca, a mild stimulant. Andeans had been chewing coca leaves for millennia to alleviate hunger, cold, altitude sickness and other ailments. Coca is also frequently consumed as a tea, giving a mild energizing effect.
It is only thanks to a German chemist’s invention in the 19th century of cocaine — a product whose largest single market now is the United States — that this Andean staple has come to be vilified and its international sale banned.
For Sanho Tree, drug policy director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, it is a “no-brainer” that Guerrero did nothing wrong, and that he should never have been banned in the first place.
“We need to approach these substances based on their effects instead of arbitrary classifications based on stigma,” Tree says. “Comparing the effects of coca tea to cocaine is like comparing the effects of ibuprofen to heroin. The stimulative effects of coca tea is closer to coffee than it is to cocaine.”
Millions of delighted Peruvians can only agree. For many of them, their national side’s participation in the World Cup is literally a once-in-a-lifetime event and large numbers are expected to travel to Russia. Now, they will have the additional thrill of watching one of Latin American football’s most accomplished goal scorers in action for their country’s team.
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Paolo Guerrero Cleared to Play in World Cup, But Questions Remain About Drug Policies originally appeared on usnews.com
