Bol failed to back up his fourth placed finish at the Tokyo Olympics, knocked out in the 800m repechage race in Paris.
Peter Bol‘s bid for Paris glory ended on Thursday night (AEDT) after he failed to progress to the semi-finals of the men’s 800m. But his coach Justin Rinaldi says the Aussie track star should feel like a winner for taking part in the Olympics after what has been an incredibly tough last three years.
Bol has had a torrid time since he burst onto the scene at the Tokyo Olympics, with a string of injury setbacks and allegations of doping taking both a physical and mental toll on the runner. And on Thursday night he gave his all sitting outside the speed in his repechage race. But he couldn’t go the pace as the athletes upped the tempo with 200m to go, missing a spot in the semi-finals.
It was a far cry from Bol’s brilliant performance in Tokyo in 2021 when he won his semi-final with a then-Australian record of 1:44.11. He then went on to finish fourth in the final, missing out on bronze by less than a second.
But Bol hasn’t been able to recapture the same form ahead of Paris and a large part of that can be put down to his off-track issues. The Aussie’s world was turned upside down in January last year when he was hit with a provisional suspension for testing positive for the banned substance EPO.
The suspension was eventually lifted the following month but Bol had to wait until August to be officially cleared by Sports Integrity Australia. And his hopes of finally putting that behind him were dashed ahead of his first run at the Paris Olympics after a potentially damaging screenshot emerged.
Peter Bol takes swipe at WADA’s case against him
Bol was mentioned in a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing involving alleged EPO use by Croatian soccer player Mario Vuskovic. Lawyers for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) claimed Bol’s case had not involved a false positive, but rather a degradation of his sample between the A and B tests.
Nine reported that anti-doping authorities told the hearing they discovered a screenshot on Bol’s phone, dated September 2022, about how to micro-dose EPO and evade drug testers. When the Aussie runner was pressed on the incident after his heat run on Wednesday, Bol took aim at WADA’s handling of the matter.
“I’m actually uncertain when they pulled that out (the screenshot) and where they pulled it from,” he told reporters. “I read every article out there and there’s probably a billion articles.
“I read a lot on crime and they decided to pull out just the one that suited them; which is again playing a political game. If I wasn’t able to race they would have banned me a while ago and I’m still here.
“I’ve got nothing really to answer for. I think you guys should be asking (WADA) the questions and they should be answering for those comments.”
Justin Rinaldi reveals mental toll allegations have had on Peter Bol
Even after his run in the opening round, Bol’s reputation has continued to be besmirched by doping allegations and after being knocked out of the 800m event, his coach Rinaldi broke down in tears as he opened up about the effect the saga was having on his star runner. “It’s hard, he told Channel 9 inside the Stade France.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through that. Because we do nothing wrong… Through this whole process, there’s been lots of comments about him, but I reckon about 80 per cent of the comments were amazing. We really appreciate all the support he got. It helped him get here today because without that support he wouldn’t be here.”