COLEMAN FACES DRUG BAN AFTER BIZARRE SHOPPING DEFENCE
EIGHT months ago, in a show of quite astonishing arrogance, the newly-crowned 100m world champion Christian Coleman said he was too busy for some of the minutiae around drug testing. Now he may just have freed up an awful lot of time. That could include next summer’s Olympics if yesterday’s provisional suspension for three ‘whereabouts’ strikes is extended to a guilty verdict and a two-year ban. To avoid it, his lawyers will need to find a second rabbit in the hat that saved him last year. What they must achieve is a compelling reason for their client to have missed two tests on January 16, 2019 and December 9, 2019, with a filing failure on April 26, 2019. Given those three fell within a 12-month period, Coleman, who won the world title in September, is facing a reputation-crushing ban if the Athletics Integrity Unit charge is upheld. The American’s defence, laid out in a remarkable social media post, has been to attack the testers for a ‘purposeful attempt to get me to miss a test’. That related to the most recent missed test on December 9, when Coleman was out ‘Christmas shopping’ and testers received no response at an address in Lexington, Kentucky. Athletes are required to list an hour of each day when they will be available for testing and Coleman has raised the possibility that testers went to the wrong address.
The 24-year-old also slammed the doping officer for not calling him when there was no response, citing that he was at a shopping mall ‘five minutes’ away during his designated hour, between 7.15pm and 8.15pm. The Athletics Integrity Unit yesterday confirmed to
Sportsmail that they are under no obligation to call an athlete from the doorstep. In an angry post, Coleman wrote: ‘Knocked while I was Christmas shopping 5 mins away at the mall (I have receipts and bank statements) and didn’t even bother to call me or attempt to reach me. I was more than ready and available for testing and if I had received a phone call I could have taken the test and carried on with my night. I think the attempt on December 9 was a purposeful attempt to get me to miss a test.’ In suggesting testers may have made an error, Coleman wrote: ‘He put down the wrong address (on the testing report) so who knows if he even came to my spot.’
It is unclear why Coleman would have been at a shopping mall in the time slot he had given to testers, but it comes after his bizarre attempts to justify a separate ‘whereabouts’ saga last year. Indeed, the American was only given late clearance to run at the World Championships after the US Anti-Doping Agency controversially dropped its charges against him on the advice of the World Anti-Doping Agency due to a technicality that saw one strike back-dated to the start of the testing quarter. In Doha, having won gold, Coleman was brazen, stating: ‘I am young, I travel the world, I have friends in different places. Sometimes you go different places and it isn’t on your mind to update this app.’ Coleman insists he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs.