Nigerian-born women’s world 400m champion, Salwa Eid Naser, who was formerly known as Ebelechukwu Agbapuonwu, has been hit with a a provisional suspension for failing to make herself available for anti-doping tests, megasportsarena.com gathered.
The 22-year-old athlete, who was born in Nigeria but switched allegiance to Bahrain in 2014, ran 48.14 seconds, the third-fastest time in history, to win the world title at Doha 2019, becoming the first Asian woman to be world champion in the women’s quartermile.
She could face a ban of up to two years for the whereabouts violation, as World Athletics anti-doping rules say a whereabouts violation consists of any combination of three missed tests or filing failures in a 12-month period.
The suspension was confirmed in a statement by the Athletics Integrity Unit, which said Naser had been issued with a charge for violating World Anti-Doping Agency rules.
Athletes are required to record details of their whereabouts for one hour every day in case they need to be tested. A violation means an athlete did not fill out forms telling authorities where they could be found, or that they were not where they said they would be when testers arrived.
There have been other doping cases among Bahrain’s elite squad of female runners in recent years. In 2018 the Guardian broke the story that the Olympic steeplechase champion Ruth Jebet had tested positive for the banned blood booster EPO, and she was later suspended for four years.
The Olympic marathon runner-up Eunice Kirwa was also given a four-year ban last year, having been found to have taken EPO in an out-of-competition drug test in 2017.
It is a huge setback for Naser, who moved from Nigeria to Bahrain when she was 14, after which she won a silver medal over 400m at the 2017 world championships in London and is a former world youth champion, as she is now facing a two-year ban after being provisionally suspended for missing three drug tests in a 12-month period.
The biggest point of her career so far came when she took nearly a second off her personal best in running 48.18 in Doha, as the 2017 World silver medalist upset Olympic champion, Shaunae Miller-Uibo of Bahamas for the world title on October 3, marking the fastest time by a woman since 1985.
Only former East Germany ace, Marita Koch (47.60) and Czech athlete, Jarmila Kratochvilova (47.99) have ever run faster than Naser, who was born to a former athlete Nigerian mother and Bahraini father. When asked after her stunning victory whether Koch’s record of 47.60 set in 1985 was in reach, ‘Ebele’ responded thus: “Anything is possible.”
Although the Athletics Integrity Unit, which handles doping cases for track and field, did not announce whether Naser’s gold medal could be stripped, the athlete professed her innocence, but admitted that the missed tests came before last autumn’s world championships, where she ran the third-fastest time in history (48.14 seconds) and the fastest in 34 years.
Naser said in an Instagram live video: “I’ve never been a cheat. I will never be. I only missed three drug tests, which is normal. It happens. It can happen to anybody.
“I don’t want people to get confused in all this because I would never cheat. It’s very hard to have this little stain on my name. I would never take performance-enhancing drugs. I believe in talent, and I know I have the talent.
“This year I have not been drug tested. We are still talking about the ones of last season before the world championship. Hopefully, it’ll get resolved because I don’t really like the image, but it has happened. It’s going to be fine.”
