Athletics: Suspicion clouds Spanish victory

IF NOBODY expected the Spanish Inquisition then nobody was disappointed writes Simon Turnbull in Seville. Seville happens to be where the first Court of the Inquisition was held. But there was no tightening of thumb screws, no disembowelment, after faith in Spain's great marathon reputation was openly questioned here on Saturday.

The crowd in the Estadio Olimpico just wanted to celebrate Abel Anton's victorious home run in the men's marathon on the eighth and penultimate day of the world championships. Anton just wanted to celebrate too.

"There are no comments," he said after bizarrely claiming he "did not know" Pablo Sierra, the Spanish marathon runner who claimed in the French daily sports newspaper L'Equipe on Saturday that his country's consistent marathon success is simply in the blood, though not naturally so.

Anton - who successfully defended his world title with a brilliantly paced tactical run which took him clear to victory in the final three miles, 27 seconds ahead of the Italian Vincenza Modica - has raced against Sierra before. And he knows well enough that Sierra was suspended last year by the Real Federacion Espanola de Atletismo, the Spanish athletics federation, for "bringing the sport into disrepute" by revealing, as he did in L'Equipe, the systematic use of erythropoietin (EPO), a banned drug which provides more oxygen-carrying red blood cells, by Spain's marathon squad.

But then, Sierra, who claims he was invited to use EPO after winning the Minneapolis marathon in 2hr 11min 3.5sec in 1994, did say that Anton and all of his team-mates were "cheats".

"I became furious when I realised that all of these people who had places on the national team, including one place which should have been mine, were cheats," he said. "I began a war with the national coach and told him it was unfair to select dishonest men.

"He had the training programmes, the tests, the results, the analysis and the dosages of EPO. He even showed me tests on the best in the country. He compared the time trial tests of these athletes on the track before and after taking EPO. The difference was incredible.

"He showed me them to convince me that I would have to follow this example. If there had only been one or two cheats it would not have been so bad. But this was organised doping.

"It was impossible to fight on equal terms. The whole Spanish team is contaminated with performances around 2 hours 8 mins."

Five Spaniards, including Anton, and the 1995 world champion Martin Fiz, who finished eighth in Saturday's race, have run 2:08.5 or better. But Miguel Mostaza, who acts as a manager for Anton and Fiz and for Reyes Estevez, the bronze medallist in the 1500 metres in Seville, dismissed the significance of Sierra's allegations yesterday.

"This is nothing new," he said. "If you pay attention to a crazy person we're going to be as crazy as him.

"I think this guy has mental problems. I think he should go to the doctor and have treatment to take care of these problems."

Some nations, meanwhile, like Great Britain, who did not have any marathon men with the qualifying time to run in Saturday's race, continue the search for new blood - clean blood, of course.