Last updated 22:06, June 25 2018
David Hallett
Eight weightlifters have been ruled out of this week's Oceania champs in New Caledonia.
Eight weightlifters have been ruled out of this week's Oceania champs in New Caledonia.
Eight Kiwi weightlifters will miss the Oceania Championships this week because their drug testing forms were not submitted in time.
New Zealand Weightlifting director Simon Kent says the mishap was an administrative error from the New Zealand team combined with a miscommunication from the International Weightlifting Federation.
The eight were in a New Zealand team of 30 named for the Oceania champs in New Caledonia, but had not submitted their "Adams" report in time. It stands for the Anti-Doping Administration & Management System report in which athletes advise of their whereabouts to drug testers on any given day.
Up to 40 Oceania athletes in total reportedly missed out.
"When you boil it down, it's a bit of an administration error. We've registered athletes in this timeframe before and it's never been a problem," Kent said
"If we were the NZR [New Zealand Rugby], and we had 100 staff then you'd go yeah it certainly shouldn't happen. But we have sat around the board table and been pretty ruthless on ourselves and said look we need to get some systems and structures in place to move forward to see this never happens again and we are confident that will happen."
On April 1 a ruling was made that the 'Adams' form must be completed quarterly and submitted two months before any major competition.
April 1 was also the same day New Zealand opened its Commonwealth Games campaign.
Eight of the athletes had not completed the forms, three of whom are new to the sport in international competition.
Kent was not placing blame on his staff as he said they were being made an example of by the federation to show no country, big or small, was off limits from registering. NZ Weightlifting has one paid employee for its 30 athletes.
"We didn't register them at the time but we have never ever in the past been pulled up for that as long as you had them on the list. The IWF had been happy with that given the fact New Zealand has obviously got a very good history."
"The current climate and the sport internationally is under the gaze of the International Olympic Committee. My belief and the organisations is that the see this as an opportunity to make Oceania bit of a example."
"The cynic in me suggest we are a bit of an easy target, the Oceania region. We don't have oodles of money, we don't contest Olympic medals at this stage."
"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."
Weightlifting is under a microscope by the World Anti-Doping Agency with pressure on the International Weightlifting Federation to rid the sport of doping or face being dropped as an Olympic sport.
Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Turkey and Ukraine are currently on yearlong bans which expire in September. Each country had failed drug tests in 2008 and 2012.