Santiago Botero

Santiago Botero Echeverri (Medellín, October 27, 1972) is a Colombian former cyclist, world time trial champion.

Since his childhood he was very fond of bicycles, especially after his father, Alberto Botero, gave him an all-terrain bicycle, with which he practiced and began to compete in mountain biking races in Medellín. Although he was not a very good academic student, he became one of the most important cyclists in Colombia.

Biography

He was one of the great exponents of cycling in Colombia. Along with Luis Herrera, he is the Colombian cyclist with the most stages won in the Tour de France (3 in six participations in & # 39; La grande boucle). His ability to prevail in time trials, combined with his mountain skills make Botero a complete cyclist. He has been a professional since 1996, during which time he has ridden in three editions of the Tour de France and four editions of the Vuelta a España.

For most of his career, he was a member of the Kelme team, but in 2003 he joined T-Mobile. His good performance as part of the Kelme team was weak in the Telekom team, the team blamed him for lack of discipline in training, but according to him, it was due to health problems. In October 2004 he joined Phonak, along with Miguel Ángel Martín Perdiguero from Saunier Duval and Víctor Hugo Peña and Floyd Landis from Discovery Channel-Berry Floor.

He currently lives in Colombia and Madrid, with his wife. Botero joined the American national team, Rock Racing, for the 2008 season. In July 2010, he announced his final retirement from professional cycling.

Botero is also a Business Administrator of the Eafit University, in his country.

Professional career

Professional debut

Juan Darío Uribe, a sports doctor who discovered him and led him to road cycling, he says, gave him an effort test equal to that of his runners (some of them were Oscar de J. Vargas, Carlos Mario Jaramillo and Juan Diego Ramírez) on an exercise bike. The results fell.

The professionals reached 600 watts of power and were about to faint. Santiago looked like a robot at that point in the test and was barely panting. & # 34; I realized that he had gifted conditions. None of the thousands of athletes from Indeportes Antioquia that I have studied has shown such a level of strength", says Dr. Uribe.

He insisted that he should train in Europe and not in Colombia, that is when Santiago made his professional debut, in 1996 with the Spanish team Kelme.

First victories and testosterone positive

In 1999 he debuted his professional record with stage victories in the Paris-Nice and the Tour of Andalusia. That same year, he tested positive for testosterone and was suspended for six months at the end of the season, although the Kelme doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, claimed that his body produced it naturally. the organism) from exogenous (doping) was not developed and introduced into anti-doping controls until seven years later, in 2006.

2000s

In 2000 he was one of the great protagonists of the Tour de France, winning a stage victory and the mountains jersey.

In 2001 he won two stages in the Vuelta a España, as well as the Clásica de los Puertos and a bronze medal for being third in the World Time Trial Championship.

In 2002 he obtained what can be considered the greatest title of his career, when he was crowned world champion in the time trial, in Zolder (Belgium), over the German Michale Rich and the Spanish Igor González de Galdeano. That year he also won two stages in the Tour de France: the ninth, an individual time trial in which he beat the favorite Lance Armstrong; and stage 15, in the mountains, arriving at Les Deux Alpes.

In 2005 he won the Tour of Switzerland known as the Tour de Romandie, becoming the first Latin American to be crowned champion of the short-term competition that traverses most of French Switzerland and several of its alpine passes.

Telecom - T-Mobile

For the 2003 and 2004 seasons, Botero moved to the German team Telekom (renamed T-Mobile in 2004). However, Botero, who during his first season wore the rainbow jersey of world champion in time trials, did not achieve a victory in his two seasons in the German team. During his time with the team he met cyclists like Jan Ullrich, Andreas Klöden, Erik Zabel and Alexander Vinokourov.

Santiago Botero

Phonak

In September 2004, when the cycling season had ended, it was announced that Botero would not continue at T-Mobile and signed for the Swiss team Phonak, where he would meet again with Álvaro Pino, his director at Kelme. However, the numerous doping scandals of the team (positive for homologous transfusion of Tyler Hamilton and Santi Pérez) in the final stretch of the season caused Pino to be fired from the team on January 3, 2005, being replaced by Juan Fernández and achieving (after doubt) the relevant license to compete in the UCI ProTour, a league with the best teams and races that debuted that season.

In 2005, his first season with the Swiss team, Botero again achieved victories. Thus, he won a stage in the Tour de Romandie, with a 33-second advantage over Damiano Cunego. In June, at the Dauphiné Libéré, he won two stages (the time trial in which he beat specialists such as Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer and a mountain stage), also being second overall. All these victories were achieved within the ProTour circuit, in which he was 19th in the final standings with 95 points (the winner was Danilo Di Luca, with 229 points).

Operation Port

In 2006, within the framework of Operation Puerto, he was identified by the Civil Guard as a client of the doping network led by Eufemiano Fuentes (who had already been his doctor at Kelme), under the code names number 3, Sansone, number 4 and Nicol. Among the evidence collected by the armed institute were the following:

• A video recording made on May 4, 2006, in which Botero entered the Dr. Merino Batres (C/Zurbano n.o 92, entreplanta) in the company of Fuentes and Labarta. On the same date, two bags of frozen hematite concentrates (inducted in the registers of May 23, 2006 in one of the Madrid floors of Fuentes, specifically in the sito in C/ Alonso Cano n.o 53) appeared as follows: 4 NO SIB 04/05/06, which would correspond to Botero's key name and the date of its extraction (the day it was recorded by the researchers), allowing its identification.

• A telephone conversation intervened on 17 May 2006 at 19:39 hours between Fuentes and Botero (during the Giro de Italia that ran the Colombian). In the course of the conversation, Fuentes (who identifies Botero as Sanson) tells the Colombian cyclist "how you're going to go when you start painting those beautiful landscapes that this artist Botero paints when using the labels those Colombians".

• Document 127 associated with Botero (named Sansone) on whose reverse is the delivery of EPO on 03/01/02; on 07/01/02 and 13/01/02 he would have received EPO, oxitosona, ARANESP and a product without identifying referenced as AVR.

• Document 128 associated with Botero (named Sansone), on whose reverse is recorded with date 27/12/02 a reference to the shipment to be made by Dr. Merino Batres of different medicines that are identified by symbols. In the back of the same document there are other annotations regarding Merino's quotas that the cyclist should pay.

• Document 1, which consists of three columns written in Italian in which they refer to certain dates and a series of medications identified as ACTOVEGIN, albumin and insulin and annotated instructions at the foot of the document also in Italian with a reference to Botero and "to the blue".

• According to the documentation involved would also be one of the corridors (the Number 4) to which the group of Fuentes would treat, in addition to the program of drug administration, with the program of blood extractions/transfusions.

• In Documents 32-34, it was one of the clients (named BTR) that was listed in a table specifying the payments of several clients and a series of sections in which products, dates and economic quantities are allegedly described.

• Document 63, which relates up to nine alleged clients identifying numbers with aliases (including the 4-Nicolás attributed to Botero), with two columns with annotations that refer to a series of units defined as 1, 2 or?, which would be blood samples or hematites. The second column collects a series of dates associated with each of the alleged athletes, comparing them with the samples of plasma, blood and hematites intervened in the different apartments associated with Fuentes during the records of May 23, 2006.

Because of his involvement with Operación Puerto, Botero was separated from the Phonak team, in a decision that the rider described as "unfair", for which he was unable to participate in the races scheduled for the 2006 season.

On October 2, the Colombian Cycling Federation closed the case because there is nothing substantive, it does not present evidence and it is only suppositions, according to the president of the Colombian organization.

Botero, along with other cyclists involved in Operation Puerto, despite not being sanctioned in his country, was included in a blacklist by the UCI that prevented him from signing with any European team and limited his participation to competitions in America.

Return without penalty

2007: Featured in South America

In 2007 he rode in the Orbitel team, with a participation that was limited to the continental races of the UCI America Tour due to his veto in the main cycling races in Europe. That year he won the Tour of Colombia (plus the prologue and two stages) and was proclaimed champion of the time trial in both the Colombian Championship and the Pan American Games, thus being one of the most outstanding cyclists of the season in South America.

2008: Olympic participation

In 2008 he returned to compete abroad after accepting an offer to join the American Rock Racing team and aiming to retire after participating in the Olympic Games in Beijing. The UCI recommended to the Colombian Cycling Federation not to include Botero in its delegation for said Olympics due to his relationship with Operation Puerto. However, the National Federation did not accept this recommendation and the cyclist participated in the Olympics, being 7th in the road race and 25th in the time trial. In addition, he won the unofficial races of the Redlands Bicycle Classic and both the road race and the time trial of the 2008 Medellin South American Games.

2009: Return to Colombia

The decision to retire was postponed and he did not renew with Rock Racing, initiating contacts with Colombian teams for the return such as Colombia es Pasión and EPM-UNE for that season. He eventually joined the Orgullo Paisa program on a one-year contract with an option to continue for another year if all went well.

That year he became national time trial champion, in addition to winning a stage of the Tour of Colombia.

2010: definitive retirement

In 2010 he continued to be linked to Orgullo Paisa, although with the goal of retiring after the Tour of Colombia. He had a good start to the season finishing 5th in the Tour de San Luis and then won gold medals at the South American Games in Medellín in the time trial and road race modalities.

Ultimately, he was unable to adequately prepare for the Tour of Colombia and gave up riding it and continuing with active cycling. From that moment he became the team manager.

In January 2013, more than two years after his retirement, within the investigation carried out against Eufemiano Fuentes as a result of Operation Puerto, he declared that while he was part of the Phonak team, Botero was a client within a doping program that included homologous transfusions and substances such as EPO, growth hormones, and anabolic drugs. When questioned, the former runner admitted that Fuentes was his doctor for several years, but does not openly admit that he had received doping substances:

Doctor Fuentes had many cyclists in charge. He was my doctor for several years and did my training plans with Ignacio Labarta. People knew it for years. It's nothing new. It was a time that touched me and I have nothing else to say.

Honours of Prizes

Results in Grand Tours

	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Giro de Italia	-	-	54°	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Tour de France	-	-	-	-	7°	8°	4°	Ab.	75°	51°	-	-	-
Return to Spain	-	98°	-	-	72°	18°	66°	-	Ab.	Ab.	-	-	-
World on Route	-	-	-	-	-	29.o	128.o	-	-	-	-	-	-
Global Contrary	-	-	-	-	-	3o	1o	-	-	-	-	-	-

-: does not participate
Ab.: abandonment

Teams

• Kelme (1996-2002)
• Team Telekom/T-Mobile Team (2003-2004)
  • Team Telekom (2003)
  • T-Mobile Team (2004)
• Phonak Hearing Systems (2005-2006)
• Une-Orbitel (2007)
• Rock Racing (2008)

As an amateur

• Pride Paisa (2009)

Journalistic life

Botero works at Caracol Televisión as a commentator on El Giro, Tour y Vuelta

Personal life

Botero is a fan of the Atlético Nacional team

References and notes