Fiji will not be sending a team to this weekend's Oceania Weightlifting Championships in New Caledonia because of a clerical error.
Eileen Cikamatana celebrates on her way to winning gold in the women's 90kg weightlifting final at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Photo: AFP
The sports governing body, Weightlifting Fiji, failed to submit whereabouts information to drug testers.
Under new rules, drug testers must know where athletes are on any given day, with the forms completed quarterly and submitted two months before a major competition.
With Levuka lifters boycotting the championships, Fiji had only planned to send four athletes to Noumea.
But Weightlifting Fiji President Atma Maharaj said no Fijian athletes would be attending.
"The rules were not circulated internally for us to basically get down to the fine print and make sure we did all the work in a timely manner," Maharaj said.
"Our attention got diverted somewhere else and the wherabouts information was not completed on time," he said.
"This is not an excuse. It's not good enough but the point is that's the reality."
Weightlifting Fiji President Atma Maharaj (2L). Photo: Facebook/Weightlifting Fiji
Fiji was not alone in being caught out by the new rules with some weightlifters from New Zealand not able to compete in New Caledonia.
Weightlifting New Zealand's high performance director Simon Kent said eight lifters from its 30 member national squad had missed out.
"With the tight turn around coming off the Commonwealth Games, the new regulations coming down from the IWF (International Weightlifting Federation) got the athletes caught short," Kent said.
"It's a combination of new protocols, a national sporting organisation with only one paid employee getting caught on the hop, and it's just a really unfortunate set of circumstances."
Forty weightlifters in total have reportedly been unable to go to the Oceania Championships because of the rule change.
Maharaj said he supported the new rules.
"IWF is strengthening its anti-doping policy and we agree with strengthening anti doping policy," he said.
"Things happen for a reason and I think we'll come out of this stronger."
