Paris (AFP)

The big explanation: marathon runner Clemence Calvin, suspected of evading an unannounced check in Morocco on March 27, 2019, faces the anti-doping judges on Wednesday with her husband and coach Samir Dahmani, in a case that has seriously shaken French athletics.

The 2018 European Vice-Champion, who has always refrained from having fled a control, risks a long suspension (maximum 4 years), the offense being punished as severely by the World Anti-Doping Code as if it were was a positive control of EPO.

The challenge for the sanctions commission of the French Agency for the Fight Against Doping (AFLD), which will make its decision later, will be to determine exactly what really happened in a street in Marrakech, March 27 .

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 simply approached for an unannounced anti-doping test, which she would have tried at all costs to avoid, with the complicity of Samir Dahmani, also under the threat of a four-year suspension ?

"It's a time of explanation and meeting with the agency, said his lawyer, Arnaud Pericard on arrival at the headquarters of the AFLD with Clemence Calvin.This is a time that Clemence has been waiting for almost eight months, we will be able to explain. " During the in camera hearing, the marathon runner should be confronted with the controllers who were in Marrakech.

- Embarrassment -

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, suspended provisionally and deprived of World Athletics in Qatar, and sees the future is written in dotted lines, including the route of the Tokyo Olympics 2020. It also casts a shadow on his performance.

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 period of time. arrest due to the birth of his son in March 2017 and then to health problems.

The Calvin case also embarrassed the French Athletics Federation (FFA) by asking the question of the follow-up of its top 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.

- New shadows -

The FFA promised in April to be stricter in the selection criteria. But new shadows have emerged on French athletics with the challenge of Morhad Amdouni and the positive control of EPO by Ophélie Claude-Boxberger.

Amdouni, European Champion of the 10,000m in 2018, was targeted by a report from the German channel ARD, which revealed exchanges on the Whatsapp messaging where he is claiming payments for EPO. Amdouni firmly rejected these accusations.

Another blow Tuesday, the revelation of the positive control at the EPO, in September, the specialist of the 3,000 m steeple Ophélie Claude-Boxberger. An affair all the more embarrassing for the FFA that it involves its medical director Jean-Michel Serra, with whom the athlete has a sentimental relationship. In June, Dr. Serra had already been pinned for worrying AFLD about the number of controls Claude-Boxberger had undergone, without informing his superiors.

The Paris public prosecutor's office opened a preliminary inquiry on 14 October, entrusted to the Oclaesp (Central Office for the Fight against Harms to the Environment and Public Health).

© 2019 AFP