The Sunday Mail
As Winter Olympic athletes begin preparing for South Korea, USA sprinter Gil Roberts claimed a monumental victory courtesy of a Court of Arbitration for Sport appeals court ruling on last week.
Roberts, who tested positive for a banned drug called probenecid last March, previously claimed that his positive test was as a result of passionate kissing with his girlfriend Alex Salazar, roughly three hours before he was tested. Roberts, 28, won a 4×400-meter relay gold medal at the Rio Games in 2016 and an expedited ruling last July allowed him to compete at the US Championships in August.
There he ran a personal best of 44.22 seconds, however, the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed.
According to Salazar’s testimony last week, she contracted a sickness while on vacation with family in India and was prescribed an antibiotic called Moxylong, which contained traces of probenecid. In addition, Salazar testified to being reluctant to swallow pills and opted to empty the capsule’s contents onto her tongue, triggering his positive test result. During his appeal, Roberts stuck with that defense, and was exonerated in a New York court.
In his defense, Roberts said “There could have been tongue kissing, but it was more that she kissed me so soon after taking the medicine,” Roberts said, expressing relief that he had evaded a ban of up to four years for trace amounts of probenecid, a masking agent prohibited by sports regulators for its ability to disguise other drugs. – Yahoo
