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Salwa Eid Naser provisionally suspended for doping whereabouts failures eight months after winning world 400m title

Salwa Eid Naser wins the Women's 400m final at the 2019 IAAF Athletics World Championships - AFP
Salwa Eid Naser wins the Women's 400m final at the 2019 IAAF Athletics World Championships - AFP

Salwa Eid Naser, the Nigerian-born Bahraini, has been provisionally suspended for doping whereabouts failures eight months after clocking the third-fastest 400-metre time in history to win the world title.

Naser's 48.14-second run in Doha last October was one of the most astonishing performances of the entire World Championships, taking almost a second off the personal best she had set a year earlier.

It was also the fastest time in the world since 1985, catapulting her to third on the all-time list behind East German world record holder Marita Koch and Jarmila Kratochvilova, of Czechoslovakia.

The Athletics Integrity Unit has released no details of 22-year-old Naser's whereabouts failures, but if proven she is likely to receive a ban and could miss next year's Olympics.

Athletes are required to provide regular updates on their whereabouts to make it possible for anti-doping authorities to carry out testing outside of competition. A violation means an athlete either did not fill out forms telling authorities where they could be found or were not present where they said they would be when testers arrived.

Three violations within 12 months can lead to a suspension if the athlete is unable to justify why they were not available for testing.

Born Ebelechukwu Agbapuonwu, Naser changed her name in 2014 when she switched allegiance and started competing for Bahrain.

Her first success saw her win double gold at the Arab Junior Championships before claiming Youth Olympic silver in the same year. Her first global senior medal came at the 2017 World Championships in London where she ran a personal best 50.06sec for silver.

Olympic 400m champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo, of the Bahamas, had been unbeaten for two seasons heading into the Doha final last October and was a resounding favourite to win the world title.

However, she was left visibly aghast after running her own personal best time of 48.37sec, yet still having to make do with a silver medal.

Naser's provisional suspension is the latest in a series of doping cases against Bahrain's elite squad of female runners. Olympic steeplechase champion Ruth Jebet and Olympic marathon runner-up Eunice Kirwa both received four-year bans for EPO in the past year. Both women were born in Kenya before changing allegiance to Bahrain.