On November 8, 63 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero pronounced the following famous opening sentence in his first hearing before the Roman Senate assembled in the Temple of Jupiter Stator in his Catilinarian work: “Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?” (How far, Catiline, will you abuse our patience? How long will this fury of yours elude us? To what end will your unbridled audacity flaunt itself?).
How long, dear athletes, will you continue to abuse our patience and continue to boldly push yourselves, furiously attempting to escape intellectual honesty through doping practices ?
Today, Athetes Integrity Unity, in its March 2026 bulletin, punished athlete Viktoria Madaraz (HUN) with a four-year ban from competitions for a doping violation reported on May 21, 2025. The ban will expire on December 21, 2029. Furthermore, all of the athlete’s results have been annulled, with all the consequences that this entails, for the following periods:
– from July 10, 2017 to September 10, 2017
– from July 3, 2021 to December 3, 2021
– from May 23, 2024 to August 6, 2024
Among the mentioned periods of disqualification of results, always on 20km race walk, we find:
– the World Championships of London 2017 raced on Aug. 13. She arrived 12th in 1:30:05
– the European Championships of Rome 2024 raced on Jun. 7. She arrived 26th in 1:37:43
– the Olympic Games of Paris 2024 raced on Aug. 1. She arrived 42nd in 1:41:21
Madarász, 40 years old, holder of several national titles, obtained her best results in career with a bronze medal (which he retained) won in the 35km race of the European Athletics Championships in Munich 2022 with a mark of 2:49:58
The writer was struck by a bolt from the blue today. He had known the Hungarian athlete and his partner for over 15 years.
We never would have imagined such a career ending.
Cover photo by Zsolt Czeglédi – MTI