French athlete Clemence Calvin should be able to participate in the Paris Marathon. Challenge in a doping case, the athlete saw her suspension be lifted.
The runner-up of the European marathon runner-up Clemence Calvin , targeted by an anti-doping procedure for evading an unannounced check, obtained a reprieve on Friday: the Council of State lifted its temporary suspension, which allows it to to line the 42.2 km test in Paris on Sunday.
This rebound is a snub for the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD), which decided Tuesday to suspend, a decision that was notified Wednesday.
Clemence Calvin and her husband referred
The day had started badly for the 28-year-old. In the morning, the Marseille prosecutor’s office had confirmed that a preliminary investigation for “breaches of legislation on doping products” was already underway on Clemence Calvin at the time of his dodge control, March 27 in Marrakech. According to sources familiar with the matter, the Martigues club’s license holder and her husband and coach, the middle-distance runner Samir Dahmani, are in the AFLD’s viewfinder and investigators from the Central Office for Combating the environment and public health (Oclaesp) for weeks.
The Council of State, before which Clemence Calvin came to plead his case Friday, considered that it should have been able to explain to the AFLD “in good time”, once its suspension decided, while the marathon, “a milestone in its sporting calendar,” is taking place on Sunday. However, according to the decision of the Council of State, the AFLD offered him to make observations next week.
“Yes, I’m going to run,” had dropped the marathoner in the afternoon, leaving the hearing, while the decision was not yet made. During the Paris Marathon, she plans to achieve the minima to qualify for the Tokyo-2020 Olympic Games.
Priority target
For Clemence Calvin, who became one of the leading figures of French athletics since his European silver medal on the marathon in Berlin in 2018, everything stopped yet on March 27 in Marrakech.
She is accused of having, that day, withdrawn from an anti-doping control carried out by agents of the AFLD, left especially in Morocco for her. Her husband Samir Dahmani is accused of obstructing the three sworn controllers.
The operation owed nothing to chance, because the athlete, who has never been tested positive and often trained in Morocco with her husband, was one of the agency’s priority targets, explained several sources familiar with the issue. to AFP.
French athlete of the year 2018, Clemence Calvin broke the French record of 5 km (16 min 24 sec) during the semi-marathon of Paris, March 10, but the performance had not been approved for lack of control anti-doping on the test. The following days, she had not sought to be controlled to validate her performance, which fueled suspicions.
In Morocco, the AFLD agents also had a man in the visor in Marrakech, described as a young athlete of lower level, whom they think he may have played a role in the case, according to elements reported to the AFP. At the Council of State, Clemence Calvin explained that she had lodged with this young man. “I slept in her house,” she said.
« Je reste droite et fière »
💬 Clémence Calvin pic.twitter.com/udHljpB9dB
— L’ÉQUIPE (@lequipe) April 10, 2019
Cowboys
The athlete, initially silent since the revelation of the case, delivered to the press Wednesday its truth about the incident, describing a scene incredible, where she would have suffered violence from the controllers, who, such cowboys, pretended to be policemen.
She returned to the charge Friday on Infosport , accusing this time namely the director of controls of the AFLD, Damien Ressiot, among the three people who went to Morocco, to be his “aggressor”.
“This is the person who abused us, who abused my son and there, currently, who manipulates journalists. He was 25 years old journalist, he knows the environment and the workings. And he’s hiding behind these journalists to hurt me.”
“I think when the situation started to go wrong, and they realised the gravity of what they were doing, and their mistake, they simply turned back with regret,” he said she estimated.
In front of the Council of State, the AFLD officials again firmly refuted the athlete’s version. “There is no reason for me to be anything other than a phlebotomist” when apprehending the young woman, explained the doctor Olivier Grondin, one of the most experienced controllers of the AFLD, which was part of of the mission in Marrakech.
Clemence Calvin and Samir Dahmani are now at risk of a four-year suspension. Because if the Council of State lifted the temporary suspension, the disciplinary procedure initiated by AFLD remains open for the moment.
