So Riza ha been banned for 4 years due to doping. Unless the Turkish government pulls every string in the book ( I don't think they will for a late 30s year old athlete who has been losing a lot), he's done.
His quote about the situation makes no sense. Riza makes the excuse that "he retired from wrestling' so he doesn't understand why they're targeting him. The only reason he "retired" is because the ban forced him to. I think he'd wrestle in these European Championships if he never got popped.
Everything blew up in his face after he lied about retiring after Tokyo, to continue his chase for the Olympic Gold. Embarrassingly pinned in your home town hero tourney meant to celebrate you and your career, lose a world championships in the last seconds with a push out, find out the man who owns you is coming back to stop you in Paris, have UWW and the Turkish press hype you to the moon over breaking Karelin's record (they lied/made that up, he technically wouldn't have even if he did win) only to have your coronation derailed by a terrible mistake where you get thrown and pinned in the final, then gets destroyed by a young Iranian wrestler in what with hindsight is almost certainly your last match, and to finish if off get banned from the olympics for a drug violation, nullifying the reason you kept wrestling in the first place and staining your legacy as a drug cheat.
What an unmitigated disaster, should have retired after Tokyo as the clear world nr. 2 unlucky to be in Lopez's era and just moved on to politics/bureaucracy.
Geno's career is complete with the Olympic Gold win. He's an olympic champion, the highest honor in the sport, and no one can ever take that away from him. He is also too old and not good enough to strive for beating wrestling's records and at the same time he's already won everything you can win. I don't know what motivates him personally and financially, but I'm not surprised to see him skip these Euros.