Third doping case shakes up Olympic refugee track team

A third runner on the Refugee Olympic Team has been suspended for a positive doping test, with the announcement coming before the International Olympic Committee confirms its selection of athletes for the Paris Games today.

Anjelina Nadai Lohalith was notified of her alleged use of the banned heart medication trimetazidine and provisionally banned, track and field's Athletics Integrity Unit said.

Lohalith, who fled the war in South Sudan as a child to a refugee camp in Kenya, was being funded with an IOC scholarship to prepare for her third straight Summer Games.

The 31-year-old athlete ran in the 1,500 meters for the refugee team at the previous two games, when they debuted in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.

The IOC and UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, will finalize today the selection of the refugee team for the Paris Olympics on July 26-August 11.

Lohalith was among 29 team members in Tokyo.

UNHCR has said 75 athletes in 14 sports have had scholarships for Paris.

One scholarship athlete originally from Morocco, 3,000m steeplechase runner Fouad Idbafdil, was banned for three years in December after testing positive for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO.

In March, another 1,500m runner originally from South Sudan, Dominic Lokolong Atiol, also was provisionally suspended for a positive test for TMZ.