Polish high jumper receives provisional ban days before Olympics

Poland's Norbert Kobielski at the 2023 World Athletics Championships men's high jump qualification. GETTY IMAGES

Leading Polish high jumper Norbert Kobielski has been provisionally suspended from featuring in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games just days before the opening ceremony gets underway.

27-year-old Kobielski finished 6th overall at the European Championships in Rome last month consolidating his spot in Poland’s Olympic squad but a failed test has now seen him provisionally suspended from participating.

According to the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an independent organisation founded by World Athletics in 2017 to combat doping, the Polish high jumper tested positive for the banned substance pentedrone norephedrine metabolite.

Kobielski has now left the Polish Olympic delegation in Paris and will await a final decision at a hearing.

The 27-year-old made Poland’s Olympic squad having finished 5th at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul last year and 10th at the 2023 Athletics World Championships in Budapest later in 2023 before recording his personal best of 2.33 metres at the Eugene Diamond League final event in September.

While the opening ceremony will take place along the river Seine in the French capital on Friday kicking off the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the men’s high jump qualifying rounds will not be held until Wednesday, 7 August, with the men’s high jump final taking place three days later on Saturday, 10 August.



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