Hong Kong rugby player Luke van der Smit has been sacked after failing a drugs test during his team\u2019s World Cup qualifying campaign this summer, and is facing a years-long ban from the sport.<\/p>\n
Sources said the No 8 tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance immediately after his side\u2019s 70-22 victory over South Korea on July 5, a win that secured Hong Kong\u2019s place at the 2027 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n
Van der Smit, who came off the bench in the Asia Rugby Championship clash and scored the last of his side\u2019s 10 tries in Incheon, has had his contract terminated by Hong Kong China Rugby. He has not played or trained with the Hong Kong team or club side Valley since being suspended from all rugby activity on July 31.<\/p>\n
While the player and officials have been aware of the situation for months, they decided to make it public because the South African-born forward was struggling with keeping it from family, friends and teammates any longer.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Monday, van der Smit said he was \u201cdevastated by the news\u201d he had failed a test and denied \u201cknowingly or intentionally\u201d taking a banned substance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been notified that I may have committed an anti-doping rule violation by World Rugby,\u201d van der Smit said. \u201cI have never knowingly or intentionally used a prohibited substance. I always pride myself on my integrity, and I value clean sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong rugby player Luke van der Smit has been sacked after failing a drugs test during his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[152699,108875,64,63,10340,108862,152700,152701,25356,760,1183,5813,85,8048,21418,12907],"class_list":["post-259175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-anti-doping-rule-violation","tag-asia-rugby-championship","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-china-rugby","tag-hong-kong-rugby-player-luke-van-der-smit","tag-incheon","tag-july","tag-rugby","tag-south-africa","tag-south-korea","tag-sports","tag-valley","tag-world-cup","tag-world-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}