The Gymnastics Ethics Foundation (GEF) has banned Ukrainian gymnast Oleg Verniaiev from the Olympic Games for four years starting November 2020, Verniaiev wrote on Facebook.
The athlete tested positive for meldonium, a drug usually used to treat ischemia and banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) as a performance-enhancing drug.
Verniaiev denies accusations and will lodge an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
If the decision stands, the gymnast will miss the Paris Olympics in 2024, as well.
Verniaiev considers the decision unfair as, according to him, only one out of dozen tests he took was positive.
“The most important question: how did the banned drug get into my body?,” Verniaiev writes. “Why did this happen at a time when there were no serious international competitions and training was light?“
Verniaiev had won gold on the parallel bars and silver in the individual all-around competition at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) provisionally suspended Verniaiev from the competitions since December 2020. The federation didn’t reveal the reason.
