Trinidad Olympian Michelle-Lee Ahye banned for two years

(Trinidad Guardian) Trinidad and Tobago Olympian Michelle-Lee Ahye will miss this year’s Tokyo Olympics af­ter be­ing banned for two years due to “where­abouts fail­ures,” the Ath­let­ics In­tegri­ty Unit (AIU) an­nounced yes­ter­day.

Ahye, sixth in both the 100 and 200 me­tres at the 2016 Rio Olympics and again sixth in the 100m at the 2017 Lon­don World Cham­pi­onships, was sus­pend­ed un­til April 2021.

 
The reign­ing na­tion­al 100 me­tres cham­pi­on missed three tests dur­ing 12 months across 2018 and ’19 and had been pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed since Au­gust 30 last year.

Yes­ter­day, both T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis and Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) head Ephraim Serette found the judg­ment re­gret­table.

“This is an un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ment. Michelle is a hard­work­ing ath­lete in the prime of her ca­reer,” said Lewis on the Olympic sprint fi­nal­ist and 100m 2018 Com­mon­wealth Games gold medal­list.

“That said, the rules are clear as they re­late to ath­letes’ re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and the con­se­quences for fail­ing to meet those oblig­a­tions.

“We re­main avail­able to af­ford the sup­port and guid­ance to our ath­letes when set­backs oc­cur in their ca­reers.”

Of the first-time of­fend­er, Lewis added: “She com­pet­ed on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions be­tween May 2019 and Au­gust 2019. Ap­par­ent­ly test­ed (blood or urine) on some 10 oc­ca­sions. The test re­sults were ei­ther neg­a­tive or yield­ed no re­sults.”

Elite ath­letes are bound to de­clare their lo­ca­tion for po­ten­tial vis­its by an­ti-dop­ing of­fi­cials.

Any com­bi­na­tion of three missed tests or fil­ing fail­ures with­in a 12-month pe­ri­od is con­sid­ered a vi­o­la­tion of an­ti-dop­ing rules and car­ries an au­to­mat­ic two-year ban.

The AIU Unit said Ahye’s ban takes ef­fect from April 19, 2019, the date of her last missed test.

Ser­rette, who is cur­rent­ly in Ba­hamas at­tend­ing a North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) board meet­ing, had sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments to Lewis, say­ing: “This is a very un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ment for one of our top fe­male ath­letes.

She’s in the prime of her ath­let­ic ca­reer and is a hard­work­ing in­di­vid­ual.

“The rules as they are stat­ed in re­spect to this mat­ter are clear as it re­lates to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the ath­lete as well as the con­se­quences.

“As an as­so­ci­a­tion, we re­main com­mit­ted to part­ner­ing with the Olympic Com­mit­tee and the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs to pro­vide sup­port and guid­ance more so when these sort of in­ci­dents oc­cur.”

The 27-year-old Ahye, who copped sil­ver at the Pan Amer­i­can Games last year, will al­so see all her re­sults from April 19-Au­gust 30, 2019, scrubbed from the record books, ac­cord­ing to the AIU, the in­de­pen­dent an­ti-dop­ing watch­dog for track and field.

Ahye had been pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed last Au­gust 30, a rul­ing that saw her al­ready miss last year’s World Cham­pi­onships in Do­ha.