Christian Coleman to miss Tokyo Olympic Games after being hit with two-year ban for doping whereabouts failures
Christian Coleman, the 100m world champion, will miss next summers’s Tokyo Olympics after being banned for two years for a doping whereabouts violation.
Athletes are required to make themselves available for drugs testing at a specific location for one hour per day and Coleman was hit with a provisional suspension in June after three violations within a 12-month period.
The American disputed the charge, claiming anti-doping officers had not followed proper procedure in attempting to contact him during the third failure, in December 2019, when he said he had been out Christmas shopping near his home.
The Athletics Integrity Unit has upheld the suspension, meaning Coleman will be banned until May 2022, ruling him out of the Olympic Games, which have been rearranged for July and August 2021 after being postponed this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The 24-year-old has the option of appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Coleman narrowly escaped a ban in 2019, when a technicality regarding how the first of three alleged whereabouts violations was dated saw the US Anti-Doping Agency withdraw a charge against him. A suspension would have ruled him out of the World Championships but freed to compete, he went on to win two gold medals in Doha, in the 100m and 4x100m relay.
However, the two latter violations combined with a third violation - on December 9, 2019 - to lead to the current ban. Coleman claimed that he had left his house to go shopping at a nearby mall but had returned home before the end of his allotted window at 8:15pm, suggesting doping control officers had either left before that time or had not noticed him return home.
Officers disputed the claim, testifying before a tribunal that they had been present for the entire hour and the AIU's report noted the implausibility of them having failed to see Coleman arriving at his house. Receipts showed that Coleman purchased food from a fast-food chain at 7:53pm, before buying 16 items at a nearby Walmart store at 8.22pm - seven minutes after the end of the window - and though he claimed he had returned home in the interim, the AIU called that version of events "simply impossible".
