Olympic refugee team runner Dominic Lokolong Atiol tests positive for doping ahead of Paris Games
MONACO (AP) — A second runner on the Olympic refugee team has been implicated in doping while preparing for the Paris Games.
Dominic Lokolong Atiol has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for trimetazidine, track and field’s Athletics Integrity Unit said Wednesday.
The same banned heart medication got Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva suspended for four years in January in a case that rocked the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
The AIU said it sent Lokolong Atiol — a refugee from South Sudan who lives and trains in Kenya — a notice of the allegation he faces in an ongoing disciplinary case
The 24-year-old runner in the 800 and 1,500 meters is one of more than 60 refugee athletes receiving financial help from the International Olympic Committee ahead of the Paris Games that open July 26.
A three-year ban was imposed in December on another refugee team member, 3,000-meter steeplechase runner Fouad Idbafdil, who tested positive for the banned blood-boosting hormone EPO.
Lokolong Atiol's athlete biography on the IOC website states he “became a refugee at 11 when he became an orphan.” He moved from South Sudan to the Kakuma refugee camp and now trains at camp named for marathon great Tegla Loroupe.
Loroupe, a three-time Olympian and winner of the New York Marathon in 1994 and ’95, led the Olympic refugee team when it debuted at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games with 10 athletes. The team had 29 athletes at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.
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