Athletics - Jamaican sprinter Campbell-Brown suspended after positive test, Yohan Blake will run just the 100m at the World Championships

Jamaica's twice Olympic 200m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown has been suspended from competition following a positive test for a banned diuretic at an athletics meeting last month.

The JAAA said the Caribbean island's most successful female athlete had voluntarily withdrawn from competition and accepted the provisional suspension.

"The Jamaican Athletics Administrative Association can now confirm that a case concerning Mrs Veronica Campbell-Brown is currently ongoing," the Jamaican governing body said in a statement on Tuesday.

"She has been provisionally suspended from competition awaiting the outcome of a disciplinary panel that will be empanelled to hear this case."

"There are two things that are unmistakable about Veronica Campbell-Brown," her manager Claude Bryan said in a statement.

"On one hand she has had good success on the track and on the other she has always stood for and carried herself with dignity."

Bryan said that being accused of infringing anti-doping rules was a shock to Campbell-Brown.



"Veronica is not a cheat, she has via hard work and dedication accomplished a record on the track which is absolutely remarkable," he said.

''She remains an ardent believer in the purity of competition, the beauty of the sport and resolute in the fact that unearned suffering has redemptive qualities. She will begin the process of clearing her name.'

"Her faith which rests not in device or creed will see her through this dark period." 

Olympic double sprint silver medallist Yohan Blake will only run in the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow after he withdrew from this weekend's Jamaican national championships

Blake suffered a hamstring injury in April and due to fitness issues was withdrawn from the Jamaican championships, his manager Cubie Seegobin said.

"Yohan's coach is not satisfied with the progress of his injury and hence his level of fitness will not allow him to compete at (the nationals) this time," Seegobin told Reuters.

"We will continue to assess the situation and re-evaluate as we approach the World Championships," he added of the August 10-18 meeting in the Russian capital.

Blake automatically qualified for the 100m at the World Championships because he was the defending champion having won the 2011 title in Daegu, South Korea.

Blake has run the second-fastest time in the 200, clocking 19.26 seconds, just behind his Jamaican compatriot Usain Bolt's world record of 19.19 seconds that the six-time Olympic champion ran at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.

Blake has only returned to competition in the last two weeks and ran a pedestrian 20.72 seconds for the longer distance at a low-key development meeting in the Jamaican capital.