The Council of State rejected on Friday one of the remedies of the marathon runner Clemence Calvin in the case of her refusal of doping control in Morocco, which earned her to be suspended four years, giving little credit to the version of the French on the facts.
The vice-European champion of the 2018 marathon was given a four-year suspension last December for this episode, which occurred on March 27, 2019, in Marrakech where she was training, which bars her the road to the Olympics in Tokyo- 2020 and at the European Athletics Championships in Paris this summer.
The Frenchwoman made several appeals to the Council of State, which on Friday rejected the one she had filed against the provisional suspension pronounced against her on April 25, 2019. Calvin, 29, and the French Agency to fight against doping (AFLD), have always kept irreconcilable versions of the March 27 incident.
The athlete has always denied having fled a control, claiming instead to have been attacked in the street by a strange trio whose leader, the former director of controls of the AFLD Damien Ressiot, would have presented himself as a French policeman.
For the Council of State, “the reports established” by the other two “sworn agents indicate that they approached in the street Mrs. Calvin, on March 27 at 5:55 pm, declined their identity and the reason for their presence, but that this one, after having initially seemed ready to lend itself to control, gained a gym where his companion (Samir Dahmani) was, then ran away with the assistance of this one and did not reappear at home between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the evening. ”
“If Mrs. Calvin disputes that the interested parties have availed themselves of the status of agents of the AFLD and have notified her of their intention to take samples and if she indicates that she has left the premises to take her child who has fallen into the pharmacy because of one of these agents, the elements which it produces in support of its allegations are not likely to call into question the findings made by sworn agents, who, contrary to what is argued, are not tainted inconsistencies or contradictions “, continues the Council of State.
The body also ordered Clemence Calvin to pay 3,000 euros to the AFLD for the costs of the proceedings. The Frenchwoman also filed an appeal against her 4-year suspension, which has not yet been examined.
