West Australian athlete Peter Bol has been ruled out of national titles in Queensland later this month

West Australian athlete Peter Bol has ruled out a return to competition at the national titles in Queensland later this month. Melbourne-based Bol has been back in training for two weeks after his suspension was lifted when a B sample did not match a positive A sample for the banned drug erythropoietin. His coach Justin Rinaldi confirmed on Tuesday that the March 30 to April 2 nationals, which double as qualification for the world titles later this year, were too big an ask. “It is probably too much of a turnaround,” his coach Rinaldi said. “The nationals are less than four weeks away. “It might be a blessing in disguise missing the Australian season and having a big focus on Europe because we haven’t done that for eight years. “It’s been Australia-Europe in the past. To have one big focus (Europe) has to be good.” Bol is still waiting to hear when he will face a Sports Integrity Australia grilling over the conflicting test results. His US-based lawyer Paul Greene will fly in for the hearing. Bol will in the meantime have his kidneys tested to see if they produce naturally high levels of EPO after the positive finding was deemed borderline and four other tests were negative, before an atypical (neither positive or negative) result was produced and a five-week suspension lifted. It is believed his siblings may also have the same test to determine if it’s genetic. SIA released a statement on February 14 saying the investigation remained ongoing, there was no time frame and that Bol’s positive and atypical findings were for recombinant EPO which was “a synthetic substance and is not produced naturally by the human body”. Bol has not competed since his silver medal effort in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 800m final last August and wore spikes for the first time since that performance on Monday night. “Even I’d forgotten it had been that long,” Rinaldi said. “When the news came out (positive EPO test) we were just about ready to tip back into spikes.” Bol will now take a cautious approach and target the end of May for a return to competition in the European season. He will need to produce a qualifying time of 1:44.70 in Europe to qualify for the world titles in Budapest in August. Bol has a personal best of 1.44.00, run in Paris in June, 2022.. “I am confident that if Peter comes out and runs like he has the last few years he will get selected,” Rinaldi said. “By June he should be back in shape and trying to qualify. “He is back to 50 per cent training load. We only made the decision late last week about nationals, so we are building up slowly. “The other night we did a full session and even then we weren’t planning to. But he was feeling good so we finished it. “It is literally a day-by-day proposition at the moment. We are now starting to get him back into everything, like getting back into the gym.” Bol’s team has asked for but still not received the lab test results that led to his suspension on January 10. Bol’s camp also revealed to The West Australian last month they will be looking at how the samples were stored and transported from Perth, where the tests took place on October 11 last year, and trucked to Sydney for analysis. Bol hasn’t been tested since been cleared. He was at last week’s Maurie Plant athletics meeting in Melbourne, his first public appearance since the news broke of his positive finding. “I told him to come along and see how much support there was for him,” Rinaldi said. “It was a big weight off his shoulders to see that actually everyone is in his corner.”

West Australian athlete Peter Bol has been ruled out of national titles in Queensland later this month

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