Martina Caironi, 100m gold
medallist at the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Paralympics and
Italian flag bearer in Rio, has tested positive for an anabolic
steroid in a surprise test by the Italian Anti-Doping
Organisation (NADO), ANSA sources said Wednesday.
Caironi, an amputee and poster girl for Italian Paralympic
sport, told ANSA the incriminated substance came from a healing
cream she started applying in January "after three months of
suffering from an ulcer at the end of my stump".
"It was an open wound that no drug managed to close".
Caironi said she had declared the use of the substance "in
the last test in October".
She said "now I find myself having to skip a world
championship in a fundamental year without yet having found a
definitive cure for my ulcer".
The head of Italy's Paralympic committee, Luca Pancalli, said
the news had been "a bolt from the blue" and that Caironi had
always been "an exemplary athlete".
He said the committee would withhold comment until more was
known about the case.
Caironi, 30, an amputee after a 2007 motorbike crash, also
won the silver in the long jump in Rio.
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