“Do you still think I’m a prima donna?”
Sarah Ulmer after the 2006 Women's World Cup in Wellington
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Jorge Sandoval reflecting on his first night of torture...
… in my prison cell, my heart was just about leaping out of my chest and I was shaking when I heard the guards coming for me in the middle of the night and I was taken out on to a main street on a three-minute walk to the police station. There were soldiers there with their faces painted, I was blindfolded with a big hooded jacket that prevented me breathing properly, and had my hands tied behind my back.
I could hear about five or six different voices. It was made clear to me I had two options, and the more I co-operated the easier it would be for me. The first was that they would talk reasonably to me, provide me with coffee and cigarettes, and ask me questions. If I told them what they wanted to know I wouldn’t be harmed. If not I’d receive the second option, which was totally unpalatable. I would be subjected to prolonged torture and various indignities by a group of commandos. I feared the worst. I didn’t know whom to trust, and all the while I could hear the agonised cries of other people being tortured.
I turned down the offer of a cigarette but I was grateful for the coffee. Initially my interrogator was happy with my responses before becoming increasingly agitated as I failed to provide him with the answers he sought. He kept bullying me, asking me the same questions over and over about things like where were the para-military’s guns hidden or what I knew about certain people, much of which I had no knowledge of. Making it even more bewildering some of the people I was asked about I knew by other names. By now I was crying, knowing that sooner or later I’d be subjected to the dreaded second option.
Next minute two guys picked me up, and I walked along a few corridors before being told to sit down. I was feeling disorientated, and I couldn’t escape the sickening screams of people in pain. I was in the torture or what I’ll forever chillingly remember as the “living” room, a description that the soldiers came up with. They said whenever they invited someone in to their house it would be in to the living room. I didn’t share their sense of humour.
I became aware my guards were asking two people I knew about me before the torture started. It lasted several hours. I was picked up and tossed around, beaten with fists, tied up by my feet, and having to hold my breath after being dipped in foul water. They were laughing in a mad, insane manner as if they were on a high with all the pain and suffering they were delighting in inflicting. They took off my blindfold in an attempt to scare me when I could see how badly beaten I was. I remember waking up in the morning feeling very sore after being taken back to my cell.
The second night was worse. There was no inquisition. The sustained beatings started immediately, and the pattern was the same on an even more traumatic third day. A 37-year-old Tome primary teacher, Hector Velasquez, died in the next cell to me on November 8 1973 from the effects of the ill treatment. He was moaning then there was a bang--may be he tried to get up off his bed and collapsed--and a few minutes later people were running about. I heard a prison warden say in Spanish “look what they’ve done to him”. I could hear everything. Looking under my blindfold I saw him carried out after he’d died. At one stage I was walking when I almost fell over him when he was still alive. The following day the body was delivered to Velasquez’s wife in a closed coffin. She only had it for two or three hours, and was not allowed to open it.
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David Robertson - Team manager Tour of Chile 1988.
“In the 1988 Tour of Chile Jorge got dealt to early on, and as the race unfolded he got better. We were very naïve. We thought we were going to a bike race, and it turned out it was being used in a cynical attempt to show Chile in a good light to its people and the rest of the world. We were completely unaware we’d walked in to a political game. Jorge was in the media spotlight from day one. He loved it initially but it built up pressures on him. It wasn’t pleasant. He realised he was being used as a pawn.
“The coup had occurred 15 years earlier and things were supposed to be much better but there were a whole bunch of unnerving experiences. One day a young Chilean rider (Peter Tormen) was being interviewed on television after performing well on a stage and having won the tour himself the previous year. He had time to say ‘forget that. My brother’s been missing for six weeks. Where is he?’ before the interview was abruptly terminated. His response still chills me to the bone. Not surprisingly the youngster’s performance dropped off. He couldn’t deal with all the pressures"
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Graeme Miller on Jorge Sandoval...
“One had to admire Jorge’s drive and energy, which I first experienced when I was racing and training with him. He was passionate about doing everything right for the riders. He wanted to put on events the riders would come to, and keep coming back to. He put everything he had in to his tours. They came first. He was never out partying like some officials liked to. Once everything was wrapped up for the day he’d go home to look after his kids.