Salwa Eid Naser maintained her innocence and categorically stated she was banned unfairly, and her comeback by winning the Paris 2024 Olympic 400m silver medal is clean.
Bahraini star sprinter Salwa Eid Naser has broken her silence on her controversial suspension three years ago, which led to her missing the Tokyo 2021 Olympics and 2022 World Championships in Budapest.
Naser made a huge comeback this year by blazing to the 400m silver medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in a blistering time of 48.53s - her second-fastest career time behind her jaw-dropping 2019 world championships winning title of 48.14s.
Dominica Republic's Marileidy Paulino stormed to the title in a new Olympic Record of 48.17s to win her country's first-ever gold medal, as Poland's Natalia Kaczmarek claimed the bronze medal in 48.98s.
With her brilliant run to announce her return as one of the fastest women in history in the event, Naser finally had the courage to speak about her ban three years ago and why it was unjust because she was innocent.
"My drug test, they were never intentional. I will never want to miss a drug test because I really don't have anything to hide," said the 26-year-old.
"So they were never intentional, they were just normal mistakes a normal human being can make and what I think is not fair is me being banned because I did nothing, it was never intentional," she contiued.
"So me being banned was unfair to me, but I thank God I'm here today."
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Despite how the journalist tried to pin down and not accept her acclaimed innocence, Naser maintained her stand on the overall ruling of the case.
"If you read from going to the wrong door, from like um going to the wrong address, and um at that time I was not responsible to fill my whereabouts information and them changing a filling failure to a missed test...what is not fair is me being banned."
Naser's Controversial Suspension
In June 2020, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) suspended Naser for two years because she had four whereabouts failures over a 12-month period, including one filing failure and three missed tests.
The AIU Disciplinary Tribunal cleared Naser in October 2020, dismissing one of those missed tests because there had been confusion relating to her exact location, and dismissing her filing failure because it fell outside the critical 12-month time frame backdated according to the rules at the start of 2019.
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Her third missed test, in January 2020, had occurred because her scheduled flight was canceled. The person in charge of updating her location in her ADAMS database account had not done so in time for her test.
World Athletics and WADA appealed this decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on June 30 2021, CAS upheld the appeal, banning Naser until February 2023, which caused her to miss the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Championships in Budapest.