Doping: two years of suspension for Ophélie Claude-Boxberger

The French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) delivered its verdict on Wednesday in the Ophélie Claude-Boxberger case.

And he is rather lenient for the 32-year-old French cross-country skier, who finally gets a two-year suspension, while she risked eight.

The multiple champion of France, who appeared on March 15 before the sanctions commission, will therefore be able to resume competition in November.

She will thus miss the next Tokyo Games.

For the MBA athlete (Montbéliard Belfort Athlétisme), it is a relief: "It will allow me to bounce back and train more calmly," she explained to France Bleu Belfort.

I will be able to participate in winter cross-country races before preparing for the indoor season in 2022. ”Ophélie Claude-Boxberger had been announced positive at the EPO in November 2019. This check had been carried out two months previously, a few days before the World Championships Doha, where the athlete finished 14th and last in his 3,000-meter steeplechase series.

She had expressed her weariness on Facebook

"It's a balanced but surprising decision," explains Maître Laurent Clauzon, one of Ophélie Claude-Boxberger's lawyers.

"The commission considered that the malicious act of Alain Flaccus, even if it would be established, does not seem likely to explain on its own the presence of EPO in the samples taken on September 18", thus referring to the complaint made by his client against his former trainer, accused of having administered the prohibitive substance without his knowledge during a massage.

A release had therefore been requested.

A month ago, the athlete from Montbéliard had delivered a long message on her Facebook account, where she expressed her weariness: "My life is competition, it's running, it's athletics, c is sport!

For a year and a half now, I have been in this state of

.

I can't see where I'm going without being able to live my passion.

I dream every night of my real life.

The one before.

He only has a few months to wait.