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Your support makes all the difference.BRITISH athletics, already struggling against falling attendances and bad publicity after the Diane Modahl drugs affair, was yesterday hit by its eighth positive drugs test in a year. Guy Marshall, a low-ranking shot-putter, has been suspended.
Marshall was ranked only 54th in Britain last year but this season has improved to 17th. His best has improved by more than a metre-and-a-half compared with a year ago. He was drug-tested at an inter-area match last May but the findings were made known only yesterday.
The British Athletic Federation's spokesman, Tony Ward, said: "It's always disappointing to get a drugs finding, but it shows the efficiency of the system." While the effectiveness of the system is not in doubt - it is probably the most intensive in Europe - the stigma of another positive test is damaging at a time when British athletes are preparing for the World Championships in Sweden next month and the sport is still searching for more sponsorship which only a clean image will secure.
Marshall is the second British shot-putter to test positive in the past year, Paul Edwards having been suspended for four years after the summer's Commonwealth Games in Canada.
Marshall's B sample has already confirmed the result of the A sample, which in the words of yesterday's federation statement "contained banned substances". The BAF has not yet disclosed the substances alleged to have been taken. A hearing will take place later this year. Should Marshall be found guilty he faces a four-year ban, which it is thought he will accept.
Butch Reynolds, the world 400m record holder, was at the centre of a drug-test mystery yesterday, after two International Amateur Athletic Federation representatives visited his Ohio home unannounced to demand a urine sample. Reynolds has been in a legal dispute with the IAAF since being suspended in 1990 for nearly two-and-a-half years after allegedly testing positive for steroids.
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