Four-year doping ban for European cross-country champ Fsiha

Robel Fsiha underwent a doping control when at a training camp in Ethiopia on November 25, 2019 -- just two weeks before his European cross-country triumph.

Robel Fsiha has until June 1 to appeal the ban.

European cross-country champion Robel Fsiha has been banned for four years after “artificial testosterone” was found in his sample, the Swedish anti-doping authorities said on Thursday.

“We have decided that Robel Fsiha is suspended for four years from February 5, 2020 until February 4, 2024,” Ake Thimfors, president of the Swedish anti-doping board, told AFP .

Fsiha, a 24-year-old of Eritrean origin, has until June 1 to appeal the ban.

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Having arrived as a refugee in Sweden in 2013, Fsiha started running internationally for his adopted country at the end of 2018, and won the European crown a year later, last December in Lisbon.

Fsiha underwent a doping control when at a training camp in Ethiopia on November 25, 2019 -- just two weeks before his European triumph.

He told Swedish media he had taken a cough medicine, saying he was “saddened” by the ban.