“Trust No One in Wrestling” | Scandal in Wrestling: Maia Abigail Cabrera Joins the Accusations Against the Federation, Targeting Yuri Maier and David Ochoa

The Buenos Aires wrestler Maia Abigail Cabrera filed a criminal complaint against Yuri Maier—an ex-Pan American medalist who works with various international organizations linked to this sport—because in July 2024, in Peru, “he would have injected her with a substance she could not identify and that, to avoid a positive doping test (…), she was forced to withdraw from the competition.” She also reported Venezuelan coach David Ochoa, responsible for the Argentine senior team, for “romantic insinuations that worsened when she turned 18 as he tried to persuade her to have relations with him,” and her coach Sebastián Vario, who allegedly sent her a WhatsApp message stating “that she had done things wrong and would not have Yuri’s support or benefits,” according to the judicial complaint the athlete filed in January of this year, which she confirmed in this exclusive interview with Página/12. The complaint was submitted to the first-instance court for criminal offenses number six, and prosecutor Juan Cruz Artico is handling it, alongside judicial presentations from Patricia Bermúdez—the only wrestler who represented the country in the Olympics—and coach Maia Noe Salinas.

Cabrera, 19, who lives in Escobar, has been practicing wrestling since 2019, the year she competed in the Buenos Aires Games to qualify for the Evita Games at age 14. Later, she won the bronze medal at the Youth South American Games in Rosario 2022; silver at the Under 23 Pan American Games last year and at the Under 20 Pan American Games in Chile 2023; and bronze at the Under 20 Pan American Games in Peru 2024.

–What motivated you to make the complaint?

–I had been facing several problems since I started in 2022, when I joined the youth team. With the national coach (the Venezuelan) David Ochoa, I had started receiving some invitations to spend time with him, which continued into 2023 and early 2024. As a minor, he had already invited me to be with him, and I always flatly refused because he was an adult. He even told me that I should leave my partner. He would constantly pressure me, would see me alone at Cenard and give me gifts. Many of the people there witnessed it. I told him “no, thanks,” and after training, they would appear in my backpack. I would take them out and show them. I always showed everyone what was happening. This continued until 2024, when he invited me to sleep with him, and I told him not to bother me anymore, that I was tired and wanted nothing to do with him. From that moment on, I didn’t see him again.

–How does Maier come into your complaint?

–In July, when I sprained my ankle at the U20 Pan American Games, I was in bad shape, unable to walk and undergoing massages and physiotherapy. We arrived in Peru, and this character, Maier, showed up. We asked if there was a doctor who could help us and inject a diclofenac to alleviate the pain from the injury. Yuri appeared where the whole team was and took aside me and another injured athlete and said, “Come, I’m going to inject you.” So he injected both of us. He told us it was diclofenac. It wasn’t diclofenac because it’s clear, not yellow, and he injected a substance that was pink. My teammate fainted right after receiving it, collapsed on the floor. He said he felt dizzy and it hurt. Maier told him, “Get up, get up.” He did, and then he told me I had to be injected. I collapsed the same way he did. We stayed there for a while, and then we left because we were dizzy and went back to the hotel.

–What happened after the injection?

–The next day we had to compete. That very night, in a huge room and alone, I was shaking, felt unwell, had vomiting, and my face was trembling a lot. It wasn’t cold in Peru to be shaking. My eye was exploding, it was all swollen. I was even struggling to lose weight because of my ankle, and it got worse because I wasn’t eating anything at all. I competed, won bronze, and was told I wasn’t going to compete on the beach because my ankle was sprained. Yuri came at ten o’clock at night and said, “Maia, you have to compete on the beach no matter what because we didn’t win enough medals to present to Enard,” and then he left. From 10 until 2 in the morning, I had to lose weight to compete on the beach the next day, with my ankle in bad shape. I went, made weight, and competed. In my group, I won all my matches, including the semifinal, and when I was coming out of the match, Yuri called me, was waiting for me, and separated me from the group and the competition area and said: “Maia, you won’t be able to compete in the final.” “Why, if I just won the semifinal, how can I not fight in the final?” I asked. And he replied: “No, because what I injected you is doping.” He said that and left. He called the doctor to bandage my ankle and said: “no, you’re not fighting.”

–And what happened then in that final?

–I didn’t tell my coach or anyone. They called me, I went in and said I wasn’t going to compete, I had to pretend my ankle was hurting. I thought: “I’ll go, fight, win, get a doping control, test positive and get sanctioned. They’ll take everything away from me, and I’ll be banned everywhere; all the effort I made to get here will end because of something that wasn’t even my fault.” I decided not to fight, to keep quiet. I received a silver medal, and all the kids asked me, “What happened, Maia, if your ankle is fine?” “I’ll tell you later when we get to the hotel.” I also approached the vice president of the Federation, Sebastián Pérez. I told him, “Yuri just told me this. What should I do?” And he replied: “You have to be smart about what you ask for,” and left. That night, one of the kids told me, “Well, now you have to be smart about what you ask Yuri for; think about what you’re going to do.” We know he gives athletes a lot of stuff: shoes, whatever. And I responded: “I shouldn’t have to be smart with anyone; I don’t want anything from him, I don’t need anything from him. I’m not interested in material things. What I want to know is what he injected me.”

–Did you talk to your coach?

–When I returned from Peru, I sent a message to my coach Sebastián Vario and told him what happened. I met with him at his house, and he said: “What we can do now is ask for a trip here. We have to be smart.” I replied: “I don’t want any of that. I just want to know what you injected me with.” In September last year, Yuri called me and said they should have informed me. I told him, “I would like to talk to you because I need to know what you injected me with because I’m feeling bad.” “Well, come to my apartment this afternoon,” he said. We went with my dad and my partner to Puerto Madero where he lives. He started talking about the tournaments and changes that were going to occur. I insisted about the injection, and he replied, “It’s something calm, it’s a Russian medication, but it will go away in a few days.” “How? I’ve had this eye for almost three weeks; I feel bad, I’m shaking, and I can’t eat anything,” I said. And he responded: “If you say anything, we won’t support you anymore in anything.” That was it. If I talked about the doping, I wouldn’t have further support from the Federation. He basically threatened me that I shouldn’t say anything about what had happened.

–And what happened next?

–I was training at Cenard, and it got worse: Ochoa mistreated me; the girls looked at me, came over, and wanted to hurt me; they hit me when we trained. I know well how a training session is and up to what point you can hit or collide, but it was beyond wrestling. They came over to use holds that generally aren’t done in wrestling. I couldn’t stay there; there was a bad atmosphere. They told me I had to go to training every day, and they wouldn’t let me rest. They wanted me to be alone training. There came a moment when I said: “I’m not going back to Cenard; why should I go if they’re treating me like a dog?”

–And then?

–I called my coach, and he said I had to urgently go to his house and told me: “Yuri is really angry with you because you’ve been spreading that he injected you. He said he won’t support you anymore in anything, on trips, in nothing. You’ve lost here.” He also spoke about my partner: “He’s a faggot; they’re never taking him on trips again, and they kicked him out too.” He called me “an idiot,” saying I should have thought things through. The issue is that he treated me very poorly because he works with Yuri. When there is a national tournament, he manages everything for it. He, who was my coach, basically kicked me in August. And I entered a deep depression.

–Did you feel scared?

–Yes, I was scared because I didn’t know what to do. An athlete knows that the worst thing that can happen to you is a doping issue. I never injected anything. I’m allergic to many things, which is why I don’t take anything. And this person, without even asking me if I wanted to be injected with anything other than diclofenac, did so. I could have died there; he didn’t even think about it. And to this day, I don’t know why he did it. Was it for the medals? I don’t know. To coach Gonzalo Peláez, I said: “Coach, this happened, this happened, and this happened.” And he replied: “Why didn’t you tell me? He has to tell me what he’s going to do to you.” He knew that doping would be conducted on the champion, but since he runs everything in wrestling, he knew that if I didn’t win, they wouldn’t do the doping on me. We went to the hotel, I spoke to the kids. The coach told me that when we got to Argentina, he would talk to Yuri. Generally, after a tournament, they give us a week or two to rest. Here, I was home for five days, and Ochoa called me to train. There was a championship in Venezuela, but the trip was canceled, and I was the only one who wasn’t informed of the cancellation. I had to return home from the airport.

–Did making the complaint scare you?

–At first, yes. And after a while, I thought it was the best thing I could have done. It freed me from many things that many didn’t know I had been holding on to alone. My dad knew what happened with Yuri, but he didn’t know what David was doing to me all that time.

–Do you regret making it?

–No, I don’t regret it because if I hadn’t made the complaint, I would be in a worse situation sport-wise than I am now. They took everything from me, but if I hadn’t made the complaint, I would have been forgotten. Now I’m at peace. I will continue wrestling in another country because they aren’t allowing me to compete in Argentina. I will keep competing at a university in the United States that has given me a scholarship.

–Do you think your testimony will be useful for future generations?

–Yes. Even to the kids who traveled to Bulgaria, I told them to enjoy the trip and not let anyone inject them; that they should take their own things, get their diclofenac injected by a doctor, and have it signed on a piece of paper. For many, it will serve as a lesson that in wrestling, you can’t trust anyone—not the president, not the coach, nor anyone.

–Did you ask for help from entities related to the sport?

–At first, yes, the people from the Integral Formation Project (FOI) at Cenard told me to go to Enard, but since María Julia Garisoain was going to receive me and she is very close friends with Yuri, I didn’t go, as she was the one who would have received the complaint. It had already happened with Salinas, who made a complaint through that medium, and it got archived. The same person from FOI told me to find an athlete who might be going through the same thing, and they told me about a teammate who was also going to make a complaint but then didn’t. She connected me with Patricia Bermúdez, the only one who showed solidarity and accompanied me. After the complaint on January 28, I approached the entities, and they dissuaded me, saying that I should have made the complaint through SOS and not externally.