Olympic swimming gold medalist Ahmed Hafnaoui voluntarily accepted a provisional suspension in a case involving providing his location for drug-testing purposes.
Hafnaoui, a 22-year-old Tunisian, has been charged with three whereabouts failures in a 12-month span by the International Testing Agency.
Whereabouts failures are missed drug tests and/or filing failures. A filing failure could mean incorrectly filling out forms to tell drug testers where an athlete can be found, or not submitting quarterly forms at all.
Provisional suspensions can be issued while awaiting a hearing on charges to determine a final sanction, if any. Suspensions for whereabouts failures can range from one to two years.
“Pending the resolution of this matter, Mr. Hafnaoui has voluntarily accepted a provisional suspension,” according to the Aquatics Integrity Unit. “Given that the case is underway, there will be no further comments during the ongoing proceedings.”
Hafnaoui authored arguably the biggest swimming upset of the Tokyo Olympics, qualifying last into the eight-man 400m freestyle final and then winning the race.
He entered Tokyo ranked 17th in the world in the 400m free in 2021 and lowered his personal best by 2.8 seconds between the heats and final.
At the 2023 World Championships, Hafnaoui won the 800m and 1500m frees in the third-fastest times in history in each race, plus took silver in the 400m free.
He didn’t compete at the Paris Olympics after saying in May that he was dealing with an undisclosed injury, according to Agence France-Presse.
