Fredy Gonzales Torres, the Colombian doctor who took care of the Nairo and Dayer Quintana brothers at the Tour de France 2020, was sentenced this Wednesday in Marseille to six months in prison sentence and 15,000 euros fine for detention and administration of prohibited substance. The court estimated that the defendant, absent during his trial, “had held well and used prohibited methods with runners, at least the Quintana brothers,” President Lola Vandermaesen said on Wednesday.
Fredy Gonzales Torres was tried for “holding a substance or method prohibited for use by a sportsman without medical justification, in this case equipment, tools, products and devices to implement infusions and/or intravenous injections”, as well as for having administered them “without medical justification” to the Quintana brothers. During two searches carried out on September 16, 2020 in hotels occupied by the Arkéa-Samsic team on the Tour de France, shifted that year due to the pandemic of Covid, infusion equipment and drugs had been seized, especially in the Chamber of Doctor Gonzales.
Winner of the Tour of Italy in 2014 and the Tour of Spain in 2016, three times on the podium of the Tour de France, Nairo Quintana ran in 2020 for the French training Arkéa-Samsic, with his younger brother. None of the two runners had undergone positive anti-doping that year.
A heavy judgment than the required sentence
At the hearing on March 3, the prosecutor had requested a year in suspended imprisonment and a fine of 5,000 euros against the Colombian doctor. President Lola Vandermaesen noted this Wednesday that “the quantity of products seized”, in particular 32 syringes and several pockets of 250 ml of physiological serum, was “incompatible with strictly personal use”.
She also recalled that the genetic profiles of the doctor and the Quintana brothers had been noted on a tourniquet. “The explanations that he used to keep magnets are based on any elements,” she continued. During the hearing in March, the prosecutor had described “a guide to the tunes of guru”, detailing a “therapy by magnets” and “nocturnal enemas with lemon juice, garlic puree and ground coffee” offered to runners, as well as the consequences of figures to repeat “to restore mental balance”.
Doctor Gonzales was also ordered to pay 6,500 euros to the Arkéa team in compensation for financial, moral and image damage. His lawyer, Me Mohamed El Yousfi, announced his intention to appeal.
After the searches of 2020, Nairo Quintana, who is now short for the Spanish cycling team Movistar, had continued the Tour de France, completed to an anonymous 17th position. Two years later, he had been disqualified in the 2022 edition, of which he had taken sixth place, after the discovery in his blood of traces of Tramadol, a painkiller prohibited by the medical regulations.