On Thursday, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) introduced the suspension of French hurdler Wilfried Happio. The 26-year-old Olympian faces a two-year ban for, on three events in a single 12 months, failing to offer correct and up-to-date whereabouts to the AIU, as required for obligatory drug testing.
Any member of the World Athletics registered testing pool is required to offer the complete addresses of and time durations spent at places of standard coaching, work, education and in a single day stays. Athletes should additionally present a each day one-hour interval and placement the place they are going to be obtainable for testing. This permits the AIU to find athletes with out prior discover to check and determine those that cheat by doping.
A whereabouts failure is warranted by an athlete’s failure to submit their whereabouts by the established deadline, or a failure to an up to date or full location or ample directions to allow a doping management officer to hold out testing. For instance, an athlete should replace their location if occurring trip. Lacking a check on the established location through the allotted 60-minute time-frame additionally constitutes a whereabouts failure.
Three mixed cases of whereabouts failures in a 12-month interval quantities to an anti-doping rule violation.
“We are going to take time to analyse and we are going to current our arguments to the AIU,” Happio’s lawyer, Anthony Mottais, instructed Reuters.
Happio is a U20 and U23 European champion within the 400m hurdles, with a private better of 47.41 seconds. He represented Staff France on the 2024 Paris Olympics, the place he superior to the semi-finals. In 2022, Happio was assaulted 20 minutes earlier than racing on the French Observe and Discipline Championships; with a bandage eye, he went on to win the nationwide title with a private greatest time. At that 12 months’s European champs, Happio positioned second behind 2023 world champion Karsten Warholm.