French heptathlete Auriana Lazraq-Khlass suspended for 22 months
French heptathlete Auriana Lazraq-Khlass has been suspended for 22 months for failing to follow anti-doping rules, the Athletics Integrity Unit has said. The case is about whereabouts, the system that lets testers find athletes outside competition, not about a positive drugs test.
Lazraq-Khlass won silver at the 2024 European Championships in the heptathlon, a two-day contest of seven events. She finished 16th at the Paris Olympics that year, and placed 12th and 18th at the 2023 and 2025 World Championships.
The Athletics Integrity Unit, which runs independent anti-doping for the sport, said she was accused of three whereabouts breaches between February and November 2025. Athletes must tell anti-doping officials where they will be so that testers can call on them. The Athletics Integrity Unit said its Disciplinary Tribunal imposed the ban with effect from 26 March 2026.
She did not contest the first two charges. Both involved not updating her whereabouts in the app athletes use to report them. She did contest the third. Her account was that an attempt to update her whereabouts for the following day was instead recorded against the same day.
The tribunal found that she did not appear to be trying to avoid testing. It did find that she had been careless and negligent. Her results from 20 November 2025 onward will be wiped out.
Lazraq-Khlass has been provisionally suspended since March, and she will stay out of competition until January 2028. For an athlete at the top of a demanding event, that is a long time away from the track, the runway and the throwing circle.
Whereabouts rules can look like paperwork. They exist so that a tester can arrive at an athlete's door, or a training track, without warning. Missed updates count as breaches even when no drug is involved, and the sport treats them seriously for that reason.
The ruling is the latest in a run of whereabouts cases across athletics. Each one follows the same path: a charge, a hearing, and a clear list of what the athlete did and did not do. In this case, the tribunal's findings separate carelessness from any intent to hide, and the ban reflects the breaches it upheld.
