Miller-Uibo furious over Naser doping decision as Wada expresses concerns
The backlash against the decision to drop doping charges against the world 400m champion Salwa Eid Naser has intensified with the woman she beat to gold last year and the World AntiDoping Agency president expressing their “concerns”.
Naser ran the third fastest time in history when she beat the Olympic champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo in 48.14sec in Doha, with only the East German Marita Koch and the Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova having gone faster. However, it later emerged that Naser was competing while an investigation into three whereabouts failures against her in the spring of 2019 was under way.
On Tuesday Naser was cleared on a technicality after one missed test was struck off because a doping control officer knocked on the door of a storage unit containing gas canisters by mistake after the Bahraini athlete had accidentally given Wada the wrong address to her apartment.
However, a furious Miller-Uibo believes that Naser should not have run in Doha and is demanding that the World Athletics president, Seb Coe, detail “each step of all the failures that unfolded from this case”.
“My concern is with World Athletics and the AIU and the role they play,” she added. “The recent turn of events, with their littered errors, in my view, opens the door for many questions: What took them so long to make this information public? How is it possible that this case lingered on until the world championships in 2019 and the athlete provisionally suspended?’”
Earlier this year it also emerged that Naser had also missed another test in January 2020, making it four whereabouts failures in total. However one of her filing failures in March 2019 was also backdated to 1 January 2019 so she did not have three offences in a 12month period and a ban.
The Wada president, Witold Banka, has said his organisation will review the case. “As it relates to Salwa Eid Naser and the World Athletics disciplinary tribunal decision on her case I am concerned,” added Banka. “Wada will analyse it carefully and exercise its right to appeal if necessary.”
In a statement World Athletics said that it had no control over the AIU, or the tribunal that decided Naser’s case. “World Athletics has no input into case management and decisions,” it added “We understand that the time this process takes can be frustrating, but the system must be independent, robust and thorough in order to maintain integrity.”
The AIU confirmed that Naser was able to compete in Doha because an investigation was still under way and no charges had been brought. “Cases are generally not concluded soon after the date of the third whereabouts failure, but often will only be finalised months later after all the necessary evidence supporting the charge is gathered,” it added.