PARIS: Russian high jumper Danil Lysenko will not compete at the European championships after being provisionally suspended for missing doping tests, athletics’ world ruling body the IAAF said Friday.
Lysenko, the world indoor champion, was one of 74 athletes vetted by an anti-doping panel and allowed to compete under a neutral flag despite the ongoing ban on Russian athletes in the wake of a major doping and corruption scandal in 2015.
But the 21-year-old Lysenko was stripped of his status as an Authorised Neutral Athlete (ANA) after failing to “provide whereabouts information as required under the IAAF Anti-Doping Rules and Regulations and to make himself available for out-of-competition testing by the AIU”, according to a statement by the IAAF.
“Mr Lysenko is accordingly not eligible to compete at the 2018 European Athletics Championships to be held in Berlin next week [Aug 7-12, 2018].”
Speaking to the RusAF official site, Lysenko said: “I’m terribly upset, but I can only blame myself for it, nobody else.
“I had a too perfunctory attitude to the ADAMS [whereabouts] system. It’s just my carelessness.”
He added: “Of course it’s not the end of my career. I’ll keep on training and will wait for a fair decision on my case.”
The IAAF in May stripped ANA status from five race-walkers, including
world 20km silver medallist Sergei Shirobokov, for having trained under Viktor Chegin.
More than 20 athletes who trained under Chegin have been sanctioned for doping-related offences between 2005 and 2015. The race-walking coach has been banned for life from all sports-related activities.
The championships will be held in Berlin from Aug 6-12.
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2018
