Ten Nigerian athletes have been declared ineligible to compete at the
2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said on
Wednesday.
AIU, an independent body created by World Athletics to manage all
integrity issues – both doping and non-doping, noted that eight athletes
from other countries were also declared ineligible while two others were
replaced prior to the submission of their entries to World Athletics.
It explained that the affected athletes, who represented some ‘Category
A’ Federations, were disqualified from the final entries for the Olympics
for failing to meet the minimum testing requirements under Rule 15 of
the Anti-Doping Rules.
This comes in spite of the improvements in the domestic testing
programmes in various countries.
AIU listed the seven identified ‘Category A’ National Federations to
include Nigeria, Belarus, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, and Ukraine.
Nigeria was list in ‘Category A’ at the start of 2020 after a continued
period of weak domestic testing levels.
