RHASIDAT ADELEKE HAS called for “harsher consequences” for anti-doping violations following the news that penalties were imposed on Bahrain ahead of the Paris Olympics.

World Athletics revealed last week that the Bahrain Athletics Association (BAA) could only send 10 athletes to the Paris Games following an 18-month investigation into “serious anti-doping rule violations”.

Thomas Barr recently called for harsher sanctions for governing bodies who are found to be in breach of the rules, with Adeleke echoing his comments to clamp down on similar misconduct.

“I feel like that could be a good way to look at it,” she replied when asked for her thoughts on the sanctions.

“I guess harsher consequences for not being involved in clean sport and not following the guidelines when it comes to anti-doping. I think that would give people the opportunity to rethink their decisions. At the end of the day, I’m definitely going to focus on me. I can’t really control what anybody else does.

“I try my best to promote clean sport and to engage in it myself. I make sure everything I’m doing is clean and it’s very important to me. I would hate it if people weren’t clean on the other side.”

Adeleke competed against Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain in the women’s 400m final at the Paris Olympics who clinched the silver medal while the Tallaght runner came in fourth. Separate to the above investigation, Naser served a two-year suspension from 2021 to 2023 for drug-testing whereabouts violations. She returned to competitive racing last year, and told The 42 that her missed tests “were never intentional” when questioned about it after the 400m Olympic final.

“At the end of the day, I actually don’t know what’s going on,” Adeleke said when asked about competing against an athlete who has served a ban for wrongdoing in relation to anti-doping.

“I can’t say such and such is doping, or such and such shouldn’t be allowed to run, because I have no hand in that. All I can do is hope everybody is clean and just improve on my own self to be able to perform regardless if athletes are clean or not.”

Adeleke says she hopes to take a break when her season comes to a close after the Brussels Diamond League in September. Next season will be her first as a full-time professional athlete after completing a course in Corporate Communications at Texas University.

Unlike most of her Team Ireland colleagues, Adeleke continued training shortly after the Paris Olympics and ran at the Silesia Diamond League meeting in Poland on Sunday where she was condemned to a fourth-place finish again.

“I’ve ran through so many situations and scenarios in my head and had so many different feelings,” says Adeleke about the psychology of coping with falling short of a podium spot.

“It was just a process of having to think of all those things to eventually get over it. I’m obviously going to think about it once in a while and think, ‘What if I did this?’ But there’s no point in continuously going over something that’s already happened. It’s more learning from it and taking pointers from it.

“It’s learning from the experience and overcome it going forward.”