A Nice Britain and Wales marathon runner, who shocked the elite to win a spot on the World Championships, was banned after returning a optimistic medicine check.
Josh Griffiths, 33, was given a three-month ban by the World Athletics’ Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after Benzoylecgonine – which is discovered within the physique when it processes cocaine – appeared in his system following Might’s Belfast Metropolis Marathon.
Griffiths, who represented Nice Britain on the 2017 and 2022 Worlds and ran for Wales on the 2018 Commonwealth Video games, denied ever taking cocaine or some other social drug.
He couldn’t show how cocaine entered his system, however of their ruling the AIU accepted that any ingestion was each out of competitors and “unrelated to sport” as they imposed the ban.
Griffiths’ ban ran for 3 months from the listening to date of 19 June 2026. As well as his race outcomes from the day of the Belfast Marathon – 3 Might – till the top of the ban have been expunged.
Following the findings, Griffiths accepted the anti-doping rule violation and the sanction.
The Carmarthenshire athlete rose to prominence when he completed because the quickest Briton as a membership runner within the 2017 London Marathon, incomes him a spot within the GB squad for that 12 months’s World Championships.
He went on to document an eighth-place end in London in 2021, having turned skilled after the 2017 success.
The AIU mentioned in its report that Griffiths remarked it was “completely unattainable” when he was instructed of the preliminary opposed discovering in his pattern and that “there will need to have been a mistake”.
Benzoylecgonine, which is discovered within the physique when it processes cocaine, appeared in each samples of his urine supplied following the Belfast marathon.
Griffiths supplied particulars of his actions and whereabouts main as much as the three Might race, in addition to his keep on the official race resort, stressing he didn’t attend any social occasions, eat any alcohol and that contact had been primarily with different athletes and race workers.
At a later listening to, he reiterated that he had by no means knowingly ingested cocaine and was not conscious of anybody near him utilizing the drug within the lead-up to the Belfast race.
Griffiths submitted scientific knowledge to assist his declare that any ingestion was out of competitors, one thing the AIU went on to agree with.