Sporting Digest: Athletics

The German Athletics Federation yesterday rejected an appeal by the marathon runner Uta Pippig and said her two-year ban for failing a drugs test still stood. Pippig will have to complete her suspension, running from April last year until April next year. A random test conducted at a training camp in April 1998 in Boulder, Colorado, where the athlete lives, showed the former Boston marathon winner had unnatural levels of the male hormone, testosterone. Pippig claimed there had been irregularities in the handling of the samples.

Jonathan Edwards, the British triple-jump world record holder, produced the biggest jump of 1999 so far, a wind-assisted 17.71 metres, at the Salamanca Grand Prix in Spain on Thursday.