Asian champion Gomathi Marimuthu faces 4-year doping ban

Asian champion runner Gomathi Marimuthu was on Friday (June 12) stripped of her 800-metre medal while being banned for four years for doping.

The Athletics Integrity Unit said the Indian runner will be banned until May 2023 and disqualified from all races in a two-month period last year.

During the 2019 Asian track championships in Qatar in April, the 31-year-old runner tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone.

Doping charges were imposed on her following three more positive tests from samples taken last month, the results of which were confirmed after she won the title.

Marimuthu can challenge the ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Tamil Nadu athlete had clocked a personal best time of 2 minutes 02.70 seconds in the women’s 800m race in Asian Championships last year after defeating the likes of China’s Asian Games champion Wang Chunyu and Kazakhstan’s former two-time Asiad winner Margarita Mukasheva to become the first Indian to bag gold in women’s 800m event in the competition.