Sara Benfares is ending her promising athletics career. The German running hopeful recently tested positive for several doping substances that she allegedly took because of a cancer diagnosis. The case raises significantly more questions than it provides answers.
As if Sara Benfare’s case wasn’t confusing enough. The publication of the positive doping test was followed by her father and trainer Samir Benfares’ defense speech that the 22-year-old had only taken testosterone and EPO to treat bone cancer. According to him, the exemption necessary for taking substances that were actually banned was simply forgotten in view of the dramatic diagnosis. According to various media reports, several visits to the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) followed in order to clarify the matter, but apparently without success, at least nothing about it was leaked to the outside world.
Videos in an Instagram post from late January showed Sara Benfares struggling to walk on crutches, with the text saying in English: “This has been my daily life for more than a year now. I’m tired of justifying my treatment to the authorities .”
The German Athletics Association (DLV), for which Benfares competed at the 2022 World Cup in Eugene and the 2022 European Championships in Munich and which she wanted to represent at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, immediately referred NADA to NADA after the allegations became known. who is responsible for the procedures. “We are very affected,” said DLV sports director Bügner at the beginning of March, saying the association is committed to the fight against doping and to “clean and fair sport.” The case “hit like a bomb” in the crisis-ridden association.
New lawyer with connections to right-wing extremists
Shortly before, a positive doping test on Sara Benfares’ younger sister Sofia had also become public. The blood doping agent EPO was also discovered in the 19-year-old, who came third in the U20 European Championships over 3000 meters last year. The LC Rehlingen, the association of the Benfares sisters, then excluded the runners. All of these events have raised numerous questions, to which very few have yet had answers.
Sara Benfares’ new lawyer is now trying to provide clarity: Dubravko Mandic. “Due to the illness, which obviously cannot be cured in the medium term,” the 22-year-old is ending her once promising career with immediate effect, said Mandic according to the “Saarbrücker Zeitung”, which is closely following the case. Benfares was initially represented by Rainer Cherkeh, a renowned sports lawyer from Lower Saxony, and he is also vice president of law in the local athletics association. It is not known why the legal advisor was changed.
Now, in Cherkeh’s place, Mandic has apparently been tasked with bringing order to the chaos. At least partially: He does not represent Sofia, who is also suspected of doping, explained Mandic, who has repeatedly caused a stir in the media in recent years. In addition to Benfares, according to the “Badischer Zeitung”, he is currently also representing the Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner, against whom the city of Potsdam has imposed an entry ban into Germany, according to the “Süddeutscher Zeitung”. According to “Correctiv” research, Sellner, long-time head of the Austrian Identitarian Movement, was one of the speakers at the secret meeting of right-wing extremists in Potsdam in November last year.
No “plausible explanation” for “diffuse disease” yet
Mandic, meanwhile, sat on the Freiburg city council for the right-wing populist AfD after previously unsuccessfully running for the Bundestag. In the Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution for 2021, Mandic is mentioned because, among other things, he referred to right-wing extremist conspiracy stories in a speech. Although the 43-year-old left the AfD in April 2021, “he did not distance himself from the positions of the ‘wing’ in terms of content,” the report says. In 2020, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the formally dissolved “wing” around Björn Höcke as “secure right-wing extremist efforts against the free democratic basic order”.
Mandic was also convicted several times, including a seven-month suspended prison sentence in 2020 for grievous bodily harm. According to the “Badische Zeitung”, Mandic continues to be “active in the right-wing scene” even after leaving the party; the paper calls him a “lawyer”. In a speech in October 2021, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, he said that even without party membership in his job as a lawyer he could “be useful to the movement”. Nothing is known about Mandic’s past mandates in sports law matters; on his website he writes of “special expertise in, among other things […] Doping criminal law.”
“Mr. Benfares was overall overwhelmed by his daughter’s illness and the doping control that was being discussed in the media,” Mandic told the “Saarbrücker Zeitung,” and explained: “What exactly he said has not yet been dealt with in the family. Ms. Benfares suffers from one diffuse bone disease for which neither the doctors nor her father had a plausible explanation.” Bone cancer cannot currently be ruled out. Sara Benfares is currently being treated by a French doctor.
Competitions supposedly not an issue – despite the start in Switzerland?
Father and coach Samir Benfares was once a world-class athlete himself; he represented France in the semi-finals over 1,500 meters at the 1995 World Cup. Shortly after the positive doping test became known, this circumstance caused astonishment – namely, whether a man with so much experience in top-class sports shouldn’t know about the procedures: how it is possible to take substances that are actually prohibited if they are medically necessary and with the help of an exemption, which ones Bodies need to be informed and what requirements must be adhered to. Especially since the 55-year-old has a reputation in running circles for always wanting to stay in control.
Lawyer Mandic, however, sees no case of doping at all, as he told the “Saarbrücker Zeitung”: “My client had no intention of taking part in competitions. She wanted to get well again.” However, the fact that the 22-year-old also posted training runs around the time of the alleged diagnosis and took part in a 7.3 kilometer competition in Switzerland at the beginning of December raises questions. She crossed the finish line just over a minute after the 2022 marathon world champion and 2023 World Cup runner-up. The training pictures were a production for the outfitter; she took part in the race in Switzerland with her “natural talent,” said Samir Benfares.
How this can be reconciled with the presumably devastating diagnosis and the resulting treatment is just one of the many mysteries in the Benfares case. Carolin Knebel, senior physician for tumor orthopedics at Klinikum Rechts der Isar in Munich, told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” at the beginning of February that a diagnosis of bone cancer is usually followed by several months of chemotherapy, then an operation and then another operation: “Everyone is happy when that happens while he can go to the toilet without an accident.” Anti-doping expert Fritz Sörgel was quoted as saying that he found it very difficult to explain the supposedly missed exemption “with excitement or something similar.” However, explanations on this matter have so far been in short supply.