DRUGS IN SPORT:JAMAICAN SPRINTER Steve Mullings has been banned for life after a second doping offence, the Jamaican Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel has said.
“We the panel believes that a clear and strong message must be sent to every athlete in Jamaica and elsewhere that prohibited substances will not be tolerated in sports,” said panel chairman Lennox Gayle.
Mullings (28), was expected to appeal the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), his attorney said. Alando Terrelonge said the decision was unfair based on the evidence presented to the three-member panel.
“There was no evidence before this panel to indicate that Mr Mullings either deliberately took a drug to enhance his performance or to mask the presence of other drugs that he was taking to enhance his performance,” said Terrelonge.
Mullings, a former relay world champion, had been found guilty on Thursday by the panel for using the banned diuretic furosemide, which can act as a masking agent for other drugs.
The sprinter, now based in the US, did not attend the hearing. Gayle said the decision to ban Mullings was unanimous.
Mullings tested positive for the substance after placing third in the 100 metres final of the Jamaican national trials in June. He had served a two-year ban after testing positive for excessive levels of testosterone in 2004.
Meanwhile, former Olympic and world champion Jeannie Longo has been cleared on a technicality of any wrongdoing by the French cycling federation (FFC) after she failed to provide her whereabouts to anti-doping authorities on three occasions.
Longo (53), who wants to compete in the 2012 Olympic road race, won the first of her 13 world road and track titles in 1985 and picked up an Olympic road-race gold in Atlanta in 1996.
Longo’s lawyers said she could not be considered a part of the French anti-doping agency’s testing pool at the time of her third “no show” because no one had informed her she was still part of the programme.
French law, as of April 2010, requires athletes to be included in a testing pool for only one year unless they are notified of an extension.
Finally, Yannick Noah’s remarks about doping were “baseless” and “provocative”, the French Tennis Federation (FFT) has said, joining a chorus of protest against the former tennis hero.
Noah, the 1983 French Open champion, said in Le Monde last week that the best way to combat doping was to legalise the use of drugs in sport, and he appeared to accuse Spanish sport in particular of using “magic potions”.
“Against the plague of doping in sport, baseless accusations and provocative comments are inappropriate, and the worst attitude would be to give up,” the FFT said.
Ten-time grand-slam champion Rafa Nadal of Spain dismissed Noah’s comments as “stupid”.
