Six months before the Olympic Games: German athlete tested positive for doping

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Excitement in German athletics: runner Sara Benfares (22) has tested positive. The Saarbrücker Zeitung reported this on Tuesday. The German Athletics Association later also confirmed the report.

The long-distance specialist is said to have tested positive for EPO, a blood doping agent that increases endurance, and the hormone testosterone. The German anti-doping agency NADA has already provisionally suspended Benfares.

Excluded from Olympic team

The 22-year-old should have played for Team Saarland at next summer’s Olympic Games in Paris (July 26 to August 11). After testing positive, she was temporarily excluded from the team. Until the matter is cleared up, she will receive no financial support from the Saar Sports Foundation, explains Johannes Kopkow of the broadcaster’s state sports association.

“This is a shock for us as a club, a very dark hour,” Thomas Klein, chairman of Benfares’ club LC Rehlingen, told Sport1. But he is still hopeful that “everything will work out in the athlete’s favor.”

Have you developed a recipe yourself?

In addition to the tartan runway, Sara Benfares is a pharmacy student. Therefore, she should actually be familiar with such substances. “Maybe she misunderstood the material and developed her own recipe. That would be fatal,” doping expert and pharmacologist Professor Fritz Sörgel told Sport1. According to Sörgel, this could also have consequences for her professional career: in order to obtain a license to practice medicine, the candidate must be exempt from punishment.

Sara Benfares became German U23 champion over 1500 meters in 2021 and won the same title over 10 kilometers on the road a year later. She is trained by her father Samir Benfares (55), once a world-class runner in the 1,500 meters. Mother Beatrice and her two sisters Selma and Sofia are also runners.

In the summer, Benfares would have participated in the Olympic Games in Paris for the first time. Particularly bitter: she grew up in the French capital and the games would have become a small home game. Now the big dream is in danger of shattering. (bjl)

Source : Blick