Arrived on the Caribbean island, Melisa Gretter and Agostina Burani tested positive and they were out of the championship. Then the case of Andrea Boquete was added and on Sunday the absence of Victoria Llorente was confirmed by Covid plus that of Julieta Alé, considered close contact. This forced the postponement of the duel that the team had to play against Venezuela.
Argentina has only seven players available, the minimum to appear on Tuesday against the United States. The group is in Puerto Rico awaiting new results from the swabs carried out this Monday.
Victoria Llorente is the last infected of the selected one.
“We are very sad and helpless. For all the effort we made for almost 40 days and the enthusiasm we had when we arrived in Puerto Rico to compete as equals. So much paddling and this happens to you … Here we come to play and now we have to focus more on the health of the players, which is what is really important“said DT Gregorio Martínez.
Far from looking to blame, Martínez was self-critical: “I prefer to take responsibility and see if we are wrong about something. We keep looking for the return to the subject and we do not know what happened. We really do take every possible precaution. With the medical department and the technical room we have already made the road, mentally, about 15 times and it is difficult to find something or someone infected who has been with us “.
And he added: “We went to Sunchales with a negative test of all the members of the delegation, we stayed for 14 days and returned on the 17th. There we gave everyone three days off and when we met again, on the 20th, we all swabbed again and We tested negative. On the 24th we did a serological test and it came back negative. We repeated the 27th, same results. The same on June 1 and 5, also both as required by FIBA. The last one was two days from the trip and, in total, there were five in a month. We all went negative and, when we got to Puerto Rico, we had two positives. That’s how it went”.
Gregorio Martínez was self-critical of the situation.
Both Martínez and the Argentine Basketball Confederation (CAB) believe that the infections could have occurred in the anti-doping control carried out by the IDTM company: “The trip implies a risk, it is clear. And then there is that official anti-doping control, which we are now finding out if Some of the two people who came to do it tested positive in the following days. There are not many more options because on top of that the players who got the control are the ones who tested positive: Burani, Boquete and Llorente. Meli (Gretter) is the other one and she was the one who accompanied Burani because it was difficult for her to do the test and she spent several hours with it. “
Argentina played two games in the continental competition, with a record of one win and one loss. La National Team beat the Dominican Republic 64-46 and fell to Puerto Rico 79-56.