Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (51 years old, Barcelona) wears a cross pendant, like when she played tennis. “I pray often. And I am going to set a candle so that this turns out well,” says the former Spanish tennis player in a conversation with EL PAÍS a few days before the trial in which, starting Tuesday, she will sit in the dock. The Prosecutor’s Office is asking for four years in prison for the three-time Roland Garros champion and her ex-husband, Josep Santacana, for hiding her assets to avoid paying a million-dollar debt. In this stage of her life with more shadows than lights, her religion offers him comfort and her two children, a reason not to give up. “My life is dedicated to them. They are everything to me, they are what keeps me going,” she says about Arantxa and Leo, who have replaced her mother’s rackets with soccer boots.
“I feel like a flan,” admits Arantxa at the doors of an oral hearing that will last a week: “A five-set match, the longest of my life.” Two years ago, she took a step forward: she took responsibility for her, she showed remorse and claimed to have been a victim of her ex-husband. Santacana, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, gave the “instructions” to get rid of the former tennis player’s assets and thus prevent the Bank of Luxembourg – which had provided him with a counter-guarantee in the conviction for tax fraud – from recovering a debt that already amounts to 6, 6 million euros. With the help of her lawyer, Borja Vives (partner of RCD), the former tennis player trusts that this collaboration with the justice system can minimize the sentence imposed on her.
“I was in love. I trusted my ex-husband and I have been immersed in this situation,” underlines Arantxa, who separated from Santacana in 2018 and lives with her children in a rental apartment in Miami (USA), where she assures that she subsists with certain difficulties. “I give private tennis lessons and, on occasion, I am hired to help organize tournaments, or as a commentator.” Half of the income goes directly to the coffers of the Bank of Luxembourg to pay off the debt. Since the process began, she has delivered almost 1.9 million to the entity. Some 700,000 euros come from the “champions book”, a financial product reserved for Olympic medalists. Arantxa won four (two silver and two bronze between Barcelona 92 and Atlanta 96), so she is entitled to receive about 6,000 euros per month that she has had to give up. “I am making a brutal economic effort, which I will continue to make all my life,” she laments. The result is that her income is not enough to support her family. “I raise my children thanks, also, to the money that friends leave me. “I’m going with that.”
“I trusted my husband and he played it for me”
Arantxa bursts into tears without consolation when she thinks that the prizes accumulated thanks to her good work with the racket have not helped her, upon reaching maturity, to live comfortably and without complications. “It is very unfair. With what I have won, not being able to make a living from tennis is a very hard blow that I did not expect. My mistake, as I have said other times, was falling in love. I trusted the person next to me, my husband, and he played the trick on me. I’m not going to throw in the towel. I didn’t do it on the track and I won’t do it now. I am in a difficult stage of my life, but sport has helped me face adversity, to be strong and resilient.”
In the divorce process that is being followed in the United States, the former athlete has requested judicial assistance to find out where an asset is of which there is no trace and which, according to her, Santacana has taken possession of. “Earning what I won cost me kilometers running on the track, hours of training, sacrifice and effort. I had to earn it, nobody gave me anything. What is mine is mine, and my children’s. That’s what motivates me the most to get it back.” The businessman, who also faces a request for four years in prison, denies his participation in the crime of confiscation of assets for which he is co-accused and alleges that the money is still hidden in accounts in Switzerland owned by the former tennis player. .
At 51 years old, Arantxa assures that he has finally taken control of his life. But he continues to pay the consequences for having let others do it. While he played tennis, his father, Emilio Sánchez—who died in 2016—managed his growing fortune. Then it was the turn of Santacana, whom she married in 2008 and who also dragged her, according to her story, into a head-on confrontation with the Sánchez Vicario family, which erupted with the publication of a book of memoirs (Come on!), which he now regrets. “After the confrontation, my relationship with my family has been recovering. But everything takes time. Santacana dragged me to do many wrong things.”
“I never knew anything about what was happening.”
Installed in “the sports bubble,” she claims that she was unaware of what was happening around her. “I have always been dedicated to tennis and I never knew anything about what was happening. “I have trusted the people closest to me, first my father and then my husband.” A situation that often occurs in elite athletes affected by financial or tax scandals. That is why Arantxa asks the young promises of the sport to be more discerning. “With full dedication to a sport it is difficult to do anything else, but it would be nice if they had a more open vision, if they tried to get involved….”
With the mistakes she has learned, Arantxa regrets that people who barely know her speak on her behalf. “My life in the United States consists of working every day, paying my debts and taking care of my children,” she says again, on the verge of tears. She has become, she claims, more distrustful and less naive, although she remains extremely sensitive. “I don’t want an image wash. I want people to know the real Arantxa, and to know what has happened. Unfortunately, it is the truth of my life.”
Protagonist for years more of the gossip pages than of the sports ones, Arantxa is not afraid, however, that his sporting legacy will be forgotten. A pioneer of women’s sports, she is euphoric about the advances of recent years. And she assures that, as a former athlete, she still enjoys popular favor. On the street, the Arantxa that survives is the one who, while still a minor, beat Steffi Graf in the 1989 Roland Garros final, the one who fought for every ball, the one who ended the matches with dirty clothes for having thrown herself into the clay The one that dazzled Spain. “Even today I walk down the street and I notice that people support me. I have always had the affection of the public and I continue to feel loved and admired. I can go with my head held high. And that is worth much more than anything else.”
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