Deaths of Italian footballers fuel doping fears
Sophie Arie and Denis Campbell

AN Italian judge is investigating the suspicious death of 70 football stars amid fears that drugs their clubs gave them may have triggered their fatal illnesses.

Mr Raffaele Guariniello, a magistrate in Turin, is probing the unusually high incidence of cancer, leukaemia and a rare disease of the nervous system among players who have appeared for top clubs such as Juventus, Roma and Milan.

"Out of 400 deaths since 1960, we are investigating 70 suspicious ones," said Guariniello, who is researching the records of 24,000 professional Italian players between 1960 and 1996. `Many more players are dying of these diseases than members of the public.’

The judge believes the consumption of `doping-style substances’ by players, with or without their knowledge, is a possible explanation. He began interviewing former players, trainers and relatives in 1999, after several widows approached him for help.

Fears have been raised that footballers in Britain could be suffering from similar diseases. "If it is true that there’s a proved link between drug misuse and football, it would have implications for our efforts to keep sport here drug-free," said Mr Michele Verroken, the anti-doping chief of the UK Sports Council, who is writing to the football authorities drawing attention to the evidence emerging in Italy.

Mr Verroken said there were parallels between the diseases afflicting Italian players and those suffered by athletes in East Germany, who were secretly drugged by the communist authorities. It is not clear what the levels of knowledge about possible side-effects of these drugs were.

"Stasi files released after the event showed the health dangers to sportsmen who take drugs. We learnt that the regimes of steroid administration caused severe health problems — including, it appears, premature death — among runners, swimmers and other athletes in the seventies and eighties."

A number of top British and Irish players, such as Ian Rush, Liam Brady, Graeme Souness and Paul Ince, spent part of their careers in Italy in the eighties and nineties. There is no suggestion that any British or Irish player has ever, even unwittingly, encountered any drug use or suffered diseases such as those emerging in Italy.

However, the fate of Gianluca Signorini, a defender with Roma, Genoa and Parma, is among those arousing Mr Guariniello’s suspicion. After giving Italy some of its most spectacular footballing moments of the nineties, the defender was totally paralysed by a rare terminal disease.

"I would like to get up and run with you, but I can’t," the wheelchair-bound hero told 30,000 devastated fans at a tribute match in May 2001, in a message read out by his daughter Benedetta. "I would like to shout songs of joy with you, but I can’t. I would like this to be a dream from which I will wake up, but it isn’t."

Horrified Italians still mourn Signorini, who died of the rare amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or ‘Lou Gehrig’s disease’, in November last year, aged 42. His case raises fresh suspicions that the country’s leading clubs may have literally driven some of their best players to death over the past 40 years by over-working them and pumping them with drugs.

Although Signorini blamed his condition on `destiny’, he listed all the drugs he had been given. "They injected me with a lot of Voltaren for the ongoing pains in the shin and Neoton and Esafosfina directly into the veins before the matches," he told Italy’s Panorama magazine.

Others, such as former Inter player Sandro Mazzola, have reportedly testified to Mr Guariniello about the use of amphetamines, high-risk radiotherapy and ‘heavy’ painkillers.

"There is a dramatic difference," said Guariniello. "The risk of liver and colon tumours is twice as high as it is among normal members of the public. For Gehrig disease, we expected perhaps one case, because the probability was 0.61. Instead we found 45 cases of the disease, and 13 of them are already dead."

Gehrig, which attacks the nervous system and the spinal cord, was named after an American baseball hero, the first major sportsman to die of the disease, and is extremely rare.

Mr Guariniello’s investigation is probing any link between the high death rates among young players and standards of practice in Italy’s biggest clubs. Research has linked leukaemia to the use of growth hormones and liver tumours can be caused by anabolic steroids, he said. But in the case of ALS, there is as yet, no scientific explanation.

Mr Guariniello believes the 45 ALS cases, which include ex- Sampdoria player Guido Vincenzi and AC Milan’s Giorgio Rognoni, who died of ALS in 1986 at 40, could in some way be related to a combination of intensive physical activity combined with leg injuries.

"We are now identifying all the players who have died for these reasons to see who might be responsible. It is emerging that there are some clubs where there have been many more deaths than in others," said Guariniello..

A Torino player now suffering from ALS told the judge about pressure from clubs: "They made me play when I was already ill. But the club convinced me not to stop. They said I had a future."

By arrangement with The Guardian.

TEEING-OFF
Big loss for golf, DGC
K.R. Wadhwaney

STARTER he was, but he specialised in golf ‘match-making’. As he grew in experience, he provided a player a four-ball group, according to his handicap, financial resources and also age. Dedicated to the cause of golf and golfers, he saw to it that the game progressed without any hindrance or acrimony. He was almost as much a legend and popular as Billoo Sethi was in a different sphere.

First to arrive and last to leave the course, this unique character was Surjit Singh Bedi, whose sudden death in a road accident went un-noticed and unreported for days. It was, in a way, sheer carelessness on the part of the Delhi Golf Club (DGC) officialdom and the International Management Group (IMG), which did not react to his demise. Had any official sent a brief pressnote, Bedi Sa’ab’s death news would have been in print.

The DGC in particular and other organisers in the Capital must realise that, if golf news is appearing in different newspapers, it is because of Tiger Sports Marketing, which is meticulously spoon-feeding the Press. This is what DGC should have done.

Now, the DGC and IMG in collaboration with the Chivas Regal should pool their resources to run a befitting tournament in his memory. Bedi’s contribution has been more than the performance of several so-called stalwarts.

Bedi was on his way to the club for the Chivas Regal competition that was in progress. He had hardly crossed the Lodhi Road crematorium when the taxi from the other side jumped over the divider and rammed into his slow-moving car. (The taxi-driver, it is said, had gone to sleep on the wheel).

Bedi did not sustain many injuries but he reportedly died owing to shock. He was distressed to see that the car, presented to him by Omi Malhotra and other DGC members, should have been damaged. Such was his love for the car and respect for the members.

The grand old man, Bedi Sa’ab died in harness virtually. It was befitting that he should have been consigned to flames at the same place where he had breathed his last.

A colourful personality, Bedi had a very subtle sense of humour. He seldom raised his voice or frowned at any member or a guest. When he was hit on the course by the cart, he retained his calmness although he had to stay off course for a few months. That was not long ago.

During his 52-year tenure at the club, Bedi made many friends and earned admiration from virtually all. There are many anecdotes that revolved around him. One that needs mention is: An African diplomat was back on the course after several months. But Bedi could pronounce his tongue-twisting name correctly. When the diplomat asked him as to how he could pronounce his name correctly, Bedi quietly said, "Sir, your name resembles "Ghar-ke-murgi-dal - mafik."

Another starter will soon join the club. But none can replace Bedi. He was an institution of the highest order. God bless his soul. Bedi’s death has been the saddest news at the start of 2003.