Paris (AFP)

The affair has shattered a beautiful history of tricolor athletics: the marathoner Clemence Calvin is summoned Wednesday with her husband and coach, Samir Dahmani, before the judges of anti-doping, for evading an unexpected control in Morocco, a fault which she refutes but which can cost her dearly.

The runner-up 2018 European marathon runner risks being sidelined for a maximum of four years, the offense being punished as severely by the World Anti-Doping Code as if it were a positive test to EPO.

The 29-year-old Frenchwoman has always defended to have fled a control, which she should reiterate Wednesday morning before the sanctions commission of the French Agency for fight against doping (AFLD), at the headquarters of the agency in Paris, where the hearing will be held in camera, unless otherwise requested by Camp Calvin.

"The procedure lasted eight months, it is an eternity in a career of high level," lamented his lawyer, Arnaud Pericard, Tuesday with AFP.

"It will be a time of explanations, but we also have questions: why this control, in the open street, abroad? Why things have slipped in this way?", He added, saying he was satisfied that his client is confronted with the controllers of the AFLD.

What happened on March 27 in Marrakech? Has the Frenchwoman been assaulted, as she says, by a strange trio whose leader, the director of AFLD checks Damien Ressiot, would have introduced himself as a police officer and demanded that she take them to his home? husband? Or was she just regularly approached for an unannounced doping control, which she would have tried to avoid at all costs?

In previous hearings before the Council of State, Dr. Olivier Grondin, one of the most experienced controllers of the AFLD, said that Clemence Calvin asked to join her husband in a gym to drop his child, but once she arrived, she took the opportunity to escape. For having interposed and helped him escape, Samir Dahmani also incurs 4 years suspension.

- Internships abroad -

When the case was revealed, the licensee of the club Martigues had walled in silence for several days before revealing his defense. In Morocco, she filed a complaint for "violence and threats". The anti-doping agents responded with a complaint in Paris with a slanderous accusation, the AFLD adding a defamation procedure.

The case has already ruined the year 2019 of Clemence Calvin, deprived of World Athletics in Qatar because of its temporary suspension, and sees the future is now written in dotted lines, including the road to the Tokyo Olympics 2020. It also casts a shadow over his performance and his successful transition from middle distance to marathon. The French, silver medalist in the 10,000m at the 2014 European Championships (Zurich), had hit a big blow in Berlin in the summer of 2018, ranking 2nd in the marathon for her first on this distance, after a long time stoppage due to the birth of his son in March 2017 and then to health problems.

Finally, the case Calvin has embarrassed the French Athletics Federation (FFA), asking the question of monitoring its high-level athletes, especially during internships abroad. Clemence Calvin was clearly in the sights of the AFLD so that the anti-doping agency decided to send a team to Morocco.

In April, the FFA promised to be stricter in the selection criteria.

But since then, a new shadow has emerged on the French athletics with the questioning of Morhad Amdouni. The European Champion of the 10,000m in 2018 was targeted by a report of the German ARD, which revealed exchanges on Whatsapp messaging where a person presented as a supplier of doping products claims payment to the athlete for a purchase of EPO. Amdouni firmly rejected these accusations.

© 2019 AFP