Austrian Dinko Jukic, who was a World Championship finalist in Shanghai this past summer, has received only a warning from an Austrian anti-doping panel after he refused to submit to a drug test in May.
On May 24th, 2011, Austrian drug-testing officials arrived at Jukic’s pool as he was about to begin a training session. Jukic is reported to have said that he would test after he trained, after which time he dove into the water and began to train. Afterwards, he claimed hygiene concerns. Read the full story here.
A press release by NADA (the Austrian anti-doping agency) today indicates a decision by a panel determined that he was in violation of the anti-doping rules, but would receive only a warning. Rather than decide that he was in violation of a “failure to submit to testing,” they decided that because of certain specified circumstances, he was instead guilty of a “whereabouts filing” where an athlete is required to notify the drug testers of their location for an hour every day. Under these whereabouts rules, an athlete only receives a suspension on their third offense (though, in the last two cases, Rafael Munoz of Spain and Albert Subirats of Spain, no penalty was handed out upon successful appeal).
Though my German is a bit rusty, it appears in the press release to indicate that he was willing to take the urine test, but it was the blood test and a risk of infection that mostly concerned him.
The clear conclusion here is that there needs to be clarifications to the whereabouts and refusal-t0-test rules. It’s proven incredibly difficult to close the loopholes in these overlapping whereabouts and refusal-to-test rules. These panels are not necessarily making the wrong decisions, based on the way the rules are written, but in some cases they are forced into making the wrong decisions based on the intent of the rules.
The panel reminded readers in the release that the decision is not final, and there is still the possibility that it could be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).