Danish national team member Frans Johannesen tests positive for Terbutaline

Danish and Faroese swimming is shell-shocked today by the news that Danish national team member Frans Johannesen at the Danish Open 2013 meet in March was tested positive for Terbutaline. Frans himself thinks that the positive test is because of the asthma medication he used during the Danish Open.

– “I am used to using an inhaler every day. Therefore I didn’t give it a thought that the new inhalator that I used during the Danish Open should contain an illegal substance, ” says Frans Johannesen.

Frans Johannesen is Faroe-born, child of Faroese parents but raised in Esbjerg in Jutland, Denmark, where he because of our status as also Danish citizens became a Danish swimmer.

There is support both here in the Faroes and among the Danes that he has done this unwittingly, but the matter remains that he has tested positive, and will have to face the doping panel this week. He has of course been scratched from the Mare Nostrum meets in Barcelona and Canet-en-Roussillon, because of this.

See the full press release (in Danish) for instance here on our Faroese site svimjing.com. See also Svoem.dk, SwimNews.dk, Politiken, Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands-Posten, DR