Bahrain’s track team is sanctioned over doping and blocked from naturalising more athletes

Bahrain’s track team will have to pause its successful strategy of naturalizing athletes from Africa after accepting a package of sanctions related to doping.

World Athletics said Thursday that Bahrain had been restricted to a maximum of 10 athletes in the track and field events at the Paris Olympics — which wasn’t announced at the time — and at next year’s world championships in Tokyo.

Bahrain’s team in Paris included Kenya-born Winfred Yavi, who won gold in Paris in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase, and Nigeria-born sprinter Salwa Eid Naser, the silver medalist in the 400. Neither athlete was accused of any wrongdoing in the case announced Thursday.

The Bahrain Athletics Association admitted a charge of “conducting itself in relation to doping, negligently and/or recklessly and/or so as to prejudice the interests of World Athletics or bring the sport of athletics into disrepute,” and another related to its employment of staff to work with athletes, governing body World Athletics said.

That followed an investigation into allegations two athletes used blood transfusions at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and into the BAA having “engaged” a coach who was under a doping-related ban, World Athletics added.

Bahrain has agreed not to recruit any more foreign athletes until 2027, World Athletics said. The next Summer Olympics are in Los Angeles in 2028. Bahrain has also committed to fund a “talent academy” to develop local athletes and has set up a new national anti-doping body.

It’s not the first time Bahrain has faced scrutiny over doping, particularly among its roster of athletes who were naturalized.

Naser missed the Tokyo Olympics while serving a ban for not being available for drug testing. Kemi Adekoya, a former world indoor champion in the 400, got a four-year ban in 2019 in a steroid case. Marathon runner Marius Kimutai was banned for three years in April after failing a drug test.