Knut Gabrielsen, the doctor for Norway’s men’s national ski team who’d wrongly advised star skier Martin Johnsrud Sundby on how to use his asthma medicine, has resigned. He said he felt terrible after giving Sundby advice that was ruled to be a violation of anti-doping rules, and stripped Sundby of some key victories.
“It bothered me terribly,” Gabrielsen told state broadcaster NRK. “It was an extra burden, and one of the reasons that I chose to resign.”
It was just last Wednesday that Sundby and Norway’s national ski federation announced that Sundby had been suspended for two months and stripped of his victories in last year’s Tour de Ski and the World Cup in the 2014-2015 season. Sundby, who has suffered from asthma since he was a child, had followed Gabrielsen’s advice for how to inhale his medicine, but the dosages were ruled to be too high.
The ski federation took full responsibility for the ruling against Sundby and Gabrielsen said he felt no pressure to resign. “No, rather the opposite,” he told NRK. “I felt that Skiforbundet wanted me to stay. ”
He said, though, that he has worked as the ski team’s doctor in addition to his job in a hospital. “It was important that I really enjoyed (the ski team work),” Gabrielsen said. “Now I found out that enough’s enough.”
newsinenglish.no staff
