Peruvian swimmer Mauricio Fiol celebrated his 25th birthday this week with long-awaited news: he has received a waiver to compete at the 2019 Pan American Games in his home country of Peru later this year.
Fiol tested positive for the banned substance Stanozolol at the last edition of the Pan American Games, which was held in Toronto, Canada in 2015. He was later handed a 4-year suspension, dating back to the date of his test. In spite of proclaiming his innocence of ever knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs in a video on his YouTube channel, he was unable to prove a source of contamination, and thus was one of the rare athletes to have received a 4-year suspension under the newer WADA rules.
His suspension is up on July 11th, 2019, which is just 2 weeks before the start of this summer’s Pan American Games. In spite of the entry deadline being May 16th, the Peruvian government received a special waiver from FINA to allow them to enter Fiol into the meet, in spite of the fact that he won’t be eligible as of the entry deadline.
The Peruvian Swimming Federation (FDPN) announced the news in a Facebook post on Friday, saying that in the coming weeks they will “announce the details of this process.”
Even at the age of 21, the time of his suspension, Fiol had already risen to be among the most successful swimmers in his country’s history. He earned a silver medal in the 200 fly at the 2015 Pan American Games, which was later stripped as the result of his failed out-of-competition test done a month before the meet. His country has only 2 swimming medals in the history of the Pan American Games: a bronze in the 200 fly from 1971 and a bronze in the 100 back from 1987.
Are athletes still subject to the same drug-testing protocols while serving suspensions?
As there is no topic and this is the closest (Latin America)
Maria Lenk Start list is released: https://sistema.cbdaweb.org.br/cbdaweb/_uploads/piscina/33497/103349700000000000000000000000000000976.pdf