The Mexican fencer Paola Pliego Lara announced that she would cease the representation of Mexico in this discipline in the face of alleged acts of corruption and "outrage and disgrace" by Mexican managers.
In an emotional statement on her social network pages, the athlete said she had been a victim of corruption by the Mexican sports authorities.
The flag of Uzbekistan already appeared on the official website of the International Fencing Federation next to her profile.
She added that the Mexican Fencing Federation, under the leadership of Jorge Castro, did not allow her to international competitions for the past three years, despite the fact that she was ranked in the top spot in the world youth rating. She missed the World Championships, the Central American and Pan American Games.
She added that the most outrageous moment was in 2016: Three days before traveling to the Olympic Games in Rio, she was informed that she had tested positive for modafinil. The news made her lose her Olympic dream, but that was not the worst. A month later, opening sample B it was found to be an error, and that her urine test did not really have any substance.
A year later the CONADE Laboratory (which made the analysis of the sample) was suspended, but it was too little too late for Paola.
Paola concluded that she had to change her nationality to continue with her sports dream of reaching Tokyo.
Last year in August, the Russian cyclist Olga Zabelinskaya, a two-time London 2012 bronze medalist and Rio 2016 silver medalist, obtained the Uzbek passport. Since then she won several medals in various competitions.
Uzbekistan has a history of athlete naturalization, mainly in freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling. Among prominent naturalized Russian-born wrestlers the two-time Olympic champion Artur Taymazov, Aleksandr Dokturishvili, Magomed Ibragimov, Rustam Assakalov, Zaurbek Sokhiev and others.
