Powell and co will not face further punishment for missing camp

FORMER 100m world record holder Asafa Powell and five other Jamaican sprinters have escaped further punishment for skipping a training session prior to the World Athletics Championships.

NO FURTHER ACTION: Asafa Powell and five other Jamaican athletes, who skipped training camp, will not face any action (Getty Images)

Powell, as well as 100m Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser and Beijing 400m hurdles gold medallist Melaine Walker were among those who failed to turn up for a mandatory Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association pre-championships training camp in Nuremberg.

The six athletes were temporarily thrown off the Jamaican team on the eve of the competition in Berlin with the JAAA claiming they would be unavailable for pre-competition urine and blood tests conducted by the International Association of Athletics Federation [IAAF].

But just hours later, the six athletes, the other three being Kaliese Spencer, Shericka Williams and Brigitte Foster-Hylton, were reinstated, following the best efforts of IAAF president Lamine Diack.

And a disciplinary panel has decided that seeing as the JAAA did introduce sanctions, only for the IAAF to request those sanctions to be removed, the athletes should not face further action.    

"A sanction was imposed against the offenders and at the instance of the president of the IAAF, the sanction was withdrawn," said the panel, in a letter to the Jamaican Amateur Athletic Association.

"To attempt to revisit the matter would be tantamount to trying them twice.

"Something needs to be done to get the coaches to be more cooperative. They need to understand that it is the JAAA that is invited to these meets and the athletes only become eligible to participate if selected by the JAAA."

The group, who are all part of the Maximising Velocity Power (MVP) training group, had been punished by the team directors because they refused to train with the main body of the team in Nuremberg, instead staying with their coach Stephen Francis at their Italian training camp in Lignano Sabbiadoro.