Paris (AFP)
The rejection of an appeal by the French specialist in the 3,000 m steeplechase, Ophélie Claude-Boxberger, against his provisional suspension after a positive control at the EPO in September 2019, was advocated on Thursday before the Council of State, which put his decision under advisement.
During a very brief hearing, where the French athlete was absent, the public rapporteur, Sophie Roussel, asked that all the legal grounds raised by Claude-Boxberger be rejected, in particular that according to which this provisional suspension would prejudice her presumption innocence.
The Council of State had already postponed in January a first appeal filed for interim measures.
The 31-year-old athlete, suspended by the French anti-doping agency (AFLD) on November 4, after a doping control test on September 18 revealed the presence of erythropoietin (EPO) in his two blood samples and urine, is at the heart of an incredible affair.
During a spectacular twist at the end of November, the man who assisted him in his preparation, Alain Flaccus, also his mother's companion, accused himself in police custody of having inoculated him with a dose of EPO without his knowledge, while 'she had dozed off on September 12 during an altitude training course at Font-Romeu. Two weeks later, the French had participated in the Doha Worlds without shining.
At the heart of a tormented family history, Claude-Boxberger had then explained that he had denounced years before, without filing a complaint, facts of sexual assault against Alain Flaccus, then coach in his club which became the Montbéliard Belfort Athletics (MBA). After her confession, she filed a poisoning complaint this time.
According to his own version, Flaccus would have acted out of jealousy towards the doctor of the team of France Jean-Claude Serra, with whom the half-cross-country girl maintains a sentimental relation. He hoped that the athlete's woes would spill over to the doctor, since fired by the federation.
From now on, the Frenchwoman, who claims her innocence, is waiting to be summoned before the sanctions committee of the AFLD, where she faces up to four years of suspension, unless she shows that she has committed no fault or negligence.
In parallel, the Paris public prosecutor's office opened a judicial investigation, at the end of November, in particular for trafficking in doping products, entrusted to the investigating judges of the public health pole of the Paris judicial court.
© 2020 AFP