Papu Gómez and doping? No, my wife gave me cough syrup, the Argentine defends himself

It’s been more than a month since the Monza and Argentina footballer was accused of doping when the banned substance terbutaline was found in his system. Now Papu Gomez is trying to defend himself with cough syrup.

He won the World Cup in Qatar with Argentina, then the Europa League with Sevilla in the spring. Papu Gomez has had a great season on the surface.

In the summer, the 35-year-old returned to Italy, where he was picked up by Monza. But he only managed a couple of games before he was punished for doping. There were a lot of question marks surrounding the whole situation, as the test for Gomez came a year after the test was taken.

And how did the Argentine get into doping in the first place? The way he tries to explain the situation is that he inadvertently took the wrong cough syrup, which contains terbutaline, banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

In order for Gomez to avoid punishment, an “exceptional justification” was required under WADA regulations. Therefore, the 35-year-old footballer decided to point to his wife Linda Raff.

“I came home with a huge cough. So my wife accidentally gave me a spoonful of syrup to ease it.”

Cough syrup

This version clearly tries to point out that it was ultimately “an unintentional ingestion caused by the athlete’s wife’s mistake”, as the case settlement states.

With this defense strategy, in which he points to his wife, Papua’s defense tried to stick to Article 10.5 of the World Anti-Doping Code, which allows for the elimination of the period of Ineligibility when an athlete proves the absence of fault or negligence. The aforementioned article speaks of cases where “the contamination of an athlete’s food or drink is by the athlete’s partner, coach or any other person in the athlete’s circle of acquaintance”.

To substantiate his thesis, Papu added that the drugs were stored in the family home after they were prescribed to his son nine months ago, and attached a photo of the prescription. Whether or not WADA will accept this defence, the Argentine striker will have to wait and see.

Source: Relevo