The eight Nigerian track and field athletes with outstanding Out-of-Competition Tests (OCT) who took took their tests on Monday are awaiting the results Tuesday before returning to the Olympic Village in Tokyo in time for the start of the athletics event on Friday.
According to World Athletics anti-doping rules, athletes are expected to have three OCTs before they can compete at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics which got underway last Friday.
Mostly affected in the Team Nigerian camp are alternate athletes who missed either one or two of the tests for unavoidable reasons. Others are student-athletes in USA colleges who didn’t undergo the required number of tests while in school.
Some of the athletes did not fill their whereabouts form which is a requirement for such testing. The whereabouts are information provided by a limited number of top elite athletes about their location to either World Athletics or National Anti-Doping Organization (NADO) that included them in their respective registered testing pool as part of these top elite athletes’ anti-doping responsibilities.
The crisis within the Athletics Federation of Nigerian which created two parallel leaderships also contributed to the situation. The leadership which hijacked the password of the Federation concealed every information sent by the Athletics Integrity Unit.
Many of Team Nigeria’s top athletes like Blessing Okagbare, Divine Oduduru, Ese Brume, Tobi Amusan, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, and a few others who are among the 782 athletes in the elite Registered Testing Pool have been cleared to compete.
