The Spanish Society of Sports Medicine has issued an informative note, given the “comments that are being made to public opinion in relation to the treatment received by the tennis player Mr. Rafael Nadal in his last participation in the Roland Garros tournament”, stating that “infiltration is not doping”.
In 12 points, the medical entity explains, among other things, that “anesthetic infiltrations are therapeutic procedures of wide and ancient useboth in the field of sport, as well as in the workplace and in many others”.
Add that “The indications for infiltrations are well defined in medicine and their fundamental objective is to reduce pain located in an anatomical zone”.
and emphasizes that “infiltrations are not prohibited in cycling by the International Cycling Union, as has been indicated by some athlete of French nationality”, alluding to the criticism made in recent days by Thibaut Pinot Y William Martin.
explaining that “Relating concepts of infiltration and doping is incorrect and is possibly destined to sow doubt on the legality of the results of some athletes”.
The Spanish Society of Sports Medicine concludes in its letter that “infiltration is not a method of doping unless a prohibited substance is administered in that injection.”
The president of the AMA also defends Nadal
The director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Olivier Niggli, today defended the Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal after the criticism that appeared in the press and the world of French cycling, pointing out that the infiltrations to which the athlete underwent in his foot left are allowed.
Nadal’s anesthetic injections to combat the pain in his foot “are not on the list of prohibited products (by AMA), since it is estimated that they do not improve sports performance and that they are not harmful,” Niggli said in an interview for Swiss television RTS.
After his triumph at Roland Garros, which consolidated the Mallorcan as the winner of the most Grand Slam titles in the history of men’s tennis, Several French cyclists have protested against Nadal’s therapeutic practice, assuring that it is not allowed for them.
Niggli stated that the debate on infiltrations should not be taken to the field of doping but to that of medical ethics, in which one could ask “if it is acceptable that an elite athlete has 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 fourteenth was not thanks to them,” he concluded.
