Peter Bol has sensationally broken off all contact with Athletics Australia just before the start of this weekend’s World Track and Field Championships in Budapest.
Bol was banned from competition earlier this year after appearing to fail a drug test, only to be sensationally exonerated and reinstated last month when it emerged his result was a false positive.
Sport Integrity Australia declared it would not progress with an anti-doping rule violation and closed its investigation into his false positive for synthetic EPO earlier this month.
AA has repeatedly approached Bol and his management team to discuss the issue, but the second-fastest 800m runner in Australian history is refusing to talk to them.
He feels the governing body hung him out to dry and he has accused AA of leaking the initial false positive result to the media, although that has never been corroborated.
But, Bol, the Commonwealth Games silver medalist over 800m, remains bitter at how the organisation handled the leaking of the false positive EPO test back in January.
He maintained his innocence and watched as sponsor after sponsor deserted him, only to be totally exonerated on August 1.
The stress of trying to clear his name meant Bol has struggled emotionally over the past year.
When he was allowed to train on a track again in March, he was a long way behind everyone else, including his best friend and training partner Joseph Deng, who has also been selected to run the 800m for Australia.
The pair have agreed to room together in Budapest in Athletics Australia accommodation, but that isn’t swaying Bol into talking with the peak body.
Bol and Deng’s coach Justin Rinaldi is supporting his athlete’s stand.
‘We don’t want to put Pete in a situation where he walks into an Australian team and doesn’t feel comfortable so we just have to work through how we manage that,’ Rinaldi told the Herald-Sun.
‘I want him to be a part of the team, the athletes in the team love Pete, they genuinely support him so I think it is good to have that support around him.
‘I just hope they [Athletics Australia] learn from this and handle it differently if it ever happens again with any other athlete.’
Most of Bol’s bitterness is aimed at AA chief executive Peter Bromley, who he blames for allowing the news of the original false positive reading to go out to the media, then not supporting him once the news broke.
Bromley and AA president Jan Swinhoe have both reached out to Bol’s manager James Templeton in recent weeks, sending messages of support.
‘Peter Bol has been trapped in a very difficult and damaging no-man’s land for the last seven months,’ Bromley said.
‘He, and every other high-performance athlete, deserves clear and transparent answers to explain what went wrong and what is being done to ensure it doesn’t happen again.’
Bol, who was a great fourth in the Tokyo Olympics 800m final, kicks off his Budapest campaign in the heats on Wednesday morning.
Facebook Comments