He has sanctioned up to 2029 for doping to Spanish athletes and Abdelaziz Merzougui, 33, according to reports Relief. The biological passport of both Marathonians reflected blood doping (use of EPO or transfusions) in February 2020, but they have not been able to be sanctioned so far because the Spanish courts of justice do not recognize as a definitive test of doping to the biological passport, a useful that includes the fluctuations of the blood values of the athletes over the years to detect some irregular pattern. The resolution of the TAS returns to the Spanish anti -doping to the international path from which the ordinary courts of justice were diverted: the passport is valid as an irrefutable doping proof.
Ben Daoud matched the Spanish marathon record in December 2021 (2h 6m 35s), and on March 16 he was proclaimed champion of Spain of the distance being ninth (2h 6m 49s) in the marathon of Barcelona, a title he will lose, since the sanction includes the disqualification of all the competitions in which he participated from 2023.
Distance in which he was Olympic in London 2012 and Rio 2016. Ben Daoud emigrated from Morocco in 2010, a 14 -year -old boy, at the basement of a truck to Algeciras, where Spanish social services took care of him. He lived in the Zabaloetxe Children Center, in Loiu, in the Basque Country, where coach Hassan Reddad had launched an integration and training project through athletics and study. In the same center studying Merzougui, who ran with Ben Daud the 2021 Valencia Marathon with a magnificent 2h 8m 52s mark in his distance debut.
While Merzougui obtained Spanish nationality in 2009, Ben Daoud did not get it until December 2018, just at the time they began to collect their data in the biological passport. Hematocrit, hemoglobin and reticulocytes that have incriminated Merzougui were collected over 10 years, between 2010 and 2019, while Ben Daoud already showed irregular values a year after starting to take samples, at the end of 2019.
In February 2020, the International Panel of Experts in the interpretation of the passport ruled that blood doping had occurred in both athletes and sent its conclusions to the Spanish anti -doping agency (then AEPSAD, now Celad) to sanction them. Just in those months the AEPSAD felt unauthorized to sanction for irregularities in the passport because the Burgos cyclist had just exploded to which he had sanctioned in 2018 to see his suspension annulled shortly after by the Administrative Court of Sports (TAD), under the Higher Sports Council (TAD), which considered that the Spanish law did not admit as evidence the biological passport. The World Anti -Doping Agency (AMA), the organization that launched the passport with great success, as Marta Domínguez already checked, resorted to the TAD resolution to the Administrative Contentious Court, which in October 2020 continued to give the reason to the cyclist, and deny value to the passport, and later before the National Court, the last instance, which failed in January 2023 always against the passport. While the courts studied the procedure, the cases of Ben Daud and Merzougui were intelligently paralyzed by the legal services of the Spanish Agency, which sought to prevent the impasse from built by the judicial resolutions would run the period of 12 months between initiation and resolution.
Only in July 2023 the Spanish agency, already Celad, finally decided to open the file to both. In January 2024, coinciding with the crisis that ended its anti -doping court sanctioned the marathon. As expected, the TAD did not take anything to grant them the precautionary suspension a month later and not much, in April, in canceling the sanction. On this occasion, however, the AMA did not resort to the cancellation before the Spanish courts of justice, but directly before the TAS, the Great World Sports Court. He did it last May. A year later, Spain has finally been able to punish again through the biological passport.
