Coach Petar Vukicevic was summoned home to Norway after all, to answer a rising tide of questions regarding e-mail correspondence he had several years ago that involved the effect of various illegal doping substances. Antidoping Norge, the state’s anti-doping agency, also decided to take another look at the case it initially investigated back in 2004.
“More information has come forward in this case,” Anstein Gjengedal, the former Oslo Police chief who now leads the anti-doping agency, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Friday. Norway’s national athletics association asked the agency to re-open its investigation on Thursday, when Vukicevic was also ordered to return from a training session in South Africa as soon as possible.
Vukicevic is the coach and father of one of Norway’s most successful hurdlers, Christina Vukicevic. She underwent extensive testing when the e-mails involving doping first came to light, but she always tested negative.
Vukicevic reportedly “understood that he had to come home” to answer questions that have arisen after newspaper Dagbladet revealed the e-mail contents earlier this week, according to Svein Arne Hansen, president of the athletics association.
There’s been speculation that the re-emergence of the e-mails is a result of conflicts between Vukicevic and his ex-wife Turid Syftestad. The couple shared an e-mail address when the e-mails were exchanged, and she told newspaper Aftenposten that she thinks it’s “best for all parties” that the “truth” now comes forward. Syftestad, who reportedly has no contact with either her daughter Christina or her son Vladimir, insisted she was not acting out of revenge when she turned the e-mails over to both Dagbladet and Antidoping Norge.
newsinenglish.no staff
