Peter Bol failed drug test: Athletics Australia rocked by Olympic hero doping scandal
Australia’s Olympic hero Peter Bol has rocked the athletics world by testing positive for a performance enhancing drug. What does it mean for his career?
Scott Gullan
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January 20, 2023 - 4:25PM
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Peter Bol has failed a drug test
Australia’s Olympic hero Peter Bol has failed a drug test.
Athletics Australia have confirmed the 800m national record holder has returned a positive A sample to performance enhancing drug EPO and is now awaiting the results of the B sample.
Bol, 28, is protesting his innocence and tested positive in an out-of-competition test believed to be while staying with his family in Western Australia before Christmas.
He has provided his mobile phone and laptop to investigators with his Melbourne-based coach Justin Rinaldi and agent James Templeton also offering to do the same.
Bol was a favourite to be awarded Young Australian of the Year next Thursday but the drugs scandal is likely to impact on that selection.
He had won Western Australia’s Young Australian of the Year for his work as a coach, mentor, keynote speaker and his philanthropic efforts.
Australian Peter Bol tested positive for performance enhancing drugs
Australia’s track and field history has been relatively clear of drug scandals, the previous biggest involved sprinter Dean Capobianco who was banned for two years for taking anabolic steroids in 1996.
The positive drug test has rocked the track and field community given Bol has been its poster boy since his heroics at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games.
He rose to national stardom when he led from the front to win the semi-final and then finished a gallant fourth in the final, just missing out on the bronze medal.
Last year he made the world championships final in Eugene, Oregon before winning the 800m silver medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Bol’s remarkable story has been celebrated, how he was born in Sudan and then emigrated to Egypt before his family gained humanitarian status through the UNHCR, first arriving in Toowoomba, before the family settled in Perth.
He didn’t start athletics until 16 when a teacher at his high school approached him to compete in the athletics carnival. He dominated and realised track and field was his path forward rather than basketball.
Bol rose to fame at the Tokyo Olympics
Within a couple of years he won the national junior 800m title and then in 2015 he moved to Melbourne to be coached by Rinaldi.
Bol made his Australian debut at the 2016 Rio Olympics where he was run out in the heat and then again wore the green and gold at the 2017 world championships in London.
Injury forced him to miss the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and he failed to get out of the heats at the 2019 Doha world championships.
Bol benefited from the Covid break and with consistent training his development skyrocketed with 2021 his coming out parade.
He set a new Australian 800m record in the Tokyo Olympic semi-final, clocking 1min44.13sec to take the honour off his training partner Joseph Deng who had owned the record for three years.
Bol then lowered his own record at the Paris Diamond League in June last year to 1:44.00sec as he continued to prove he was one of the world’s best middle-distance runners.