John Steffensen banned for six months ATHLETICS Australia has banned triple Olympian and Commonwealth Games gold medallist John Steffensen for six months for bringing the sport into disrepute. The ban has been handed down in the wake of statements he made during a selection controversy before last year's London Olympics. It comes into effect immediately and will run until July 31, which will prevent Steffensen from qualifying for the world championships in Moscow in August. It is unclear if 30-year-old Steffensen intended to contend for selection this year, given that he has just been announced as a contestant on this year's edition of television show, The Celebrity Apprentice, and there are reports that he is considering a boxing career. The AA board announced yesterday that an exhaustive independent investigation had found that "the athlete's public allegations through the media of racial discrimination and vilification against him could not be substantiated." "Additional public claims by Steffensen that Athletics Australia chief executive officer Dallas O'Brien had misled him were also determined to be unproven," the statement said. Steffensen repeated accused O'Brien of lying in a series of Twitter posts leading up to the London Olympics, after teenaged 400m hope Steven Solomon was selected ahead of Steffensen to contest the 400m in London. Solomon went on to reward the faith of the selectors when he excelled to reach the Olympic final. During the debate over the selection issue, South African-born Steffensen said he has been regularly discriminated against by AA and suggested that racism could be the reason he was not selected. Once the Games were over, he was charged with bringing the sport into disrepute. Steffensen requested and received an opportunity to address the AA board on the issue and spoke with the directors for an hour via video link yesterday. However his defence of his actions clearly did not sway the board, which "unanimously" imposed a ban that will prevent Steffensen from racing in any competition sanctioned by the international federation (IAAF), whether domestic or international, until August. Steffensen had previously served a three-month suspension in 2010 for similar offences and the board took this into account in deciding that a six-month ban was "appropriate considering the seriousness of the breaches."