{"id":19872,"date":"2019-05-10T19:12:30","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T19:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2019\/05\/10\/mexicos-star-race-walker-lupita-gonzalez-hit-with-4-year-ban-for-doping\/"},"modified":"2019-05-10T19:12:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T19:12:30","slug":"mexicos-star-race-walker-lupita-gonzalez-hit-with-4-year-ban-for-doping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/mexicos-star-race-walker-lupita-gonzalez-hit-with-4-year-ban-for-doping\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico’s Star Race Walker Lupita Gonz\u00e1lez Hit With 4-Year Ban For Doping"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bill Chappell<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Mar\u00eda Guadalupe Gonz\u00e1lez, seen here winning the Women’s 20 km race at the IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships last May, has been banned from the sport for four years.<\/p>\n

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Yifan Ding\/Getty Images for IAAF<\/p>\n

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Yifan Ding\/Getty Images for IAAF<\/p>\n

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An athletics tribunal has banned elite Mexican race walker Mar\u00eda Guadalupe Gonz\u00e1lez from competing for four years. Officials allege that Gonz\u00e1lez, popularly known as Lupita, forged records to bolster her claim that she ate meat containing a metabolite of trenbolone, a powerful anabolic steroid.<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez, 30, has won numerous titles, including a silver medal<\/a> at the Rio Summer Olympics in 2016. She had been training recently with the intent of competing at next year’s Tokyo Games. But her chances of racing in Japan are now dashed, unless she files and wins an appeal.<\/p>\n

The Athletics Integrity Unit<\/a>, which handles integrity issues for the International Athletics Federation (IAAF), says Gonz\u00e1lez’s ban effectively started on Nov. 16, 2018. That’s the day the AIU provisionally suspended the athlete because she failed an out-of-competition drug test administered in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

The doping allegations have sent deep ripples through Mexico’s community of Olympic athletes. <\/p>\n

In early December, days after Gonz\u00e1lez was told her “B” urine sample had also failed doping tests, Mexican athletes voiced their support<\/a> for her, representing sports from boxing and fencing to diving. And last month, the head of Mexico’s Olympic Committee<\/a> said he wants Gonz\u00e1lez to focus on training at altitude for the Tokyo Olympics rather than worry about overturning her suspension in time for this summer’s Pan American Games.<\/p>\n