December 1, 2023 – 6:57 AM PST
(Reuters) – Dominican sprinter Luguelin Santos has been stripped of his World Junior Championships gold medal and banned for three years for age-manipulation violations, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said on Friday.
Santos, now 31, won 400 metres gold at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Barcelona.
In a statement, the AIU said Santos had “admitted to competing in the 2012 age-group championships with a passport showing a falsified date of birth – Nov. 12, 1993 – when in fact he was born on that date in 1992.
“Thus, he was ineligible to participate in the World Juniors 2012 which, based on the 2012 Competition Rules, required junior athletes to be aged 18 or 19 on Dec. 31 of the competition year.”
Santos, who is also a two-time Youth Olympic champion, went on to win a silver medal in the 400m at the 2012 London Olympics.
“Unlike with sanctions for doping violations … there is no basis on which to annul his Olympic result as that was not an age-group event and no violation was committed there,” said Brett Clothier, Head of the AIU.
Reporting by Aadi Nair in Bengaluru Editing by Christian Radnedge