Olympic 100m hurdles champion Brianna Rollins is banned for the entire 2017 track season for what she said was confusion regarding a computer system.
Rollins accepted full responsibility for her mistakes in a statement Thursday. She said the one-year ban, backdated to Dec. 19, was “as a result of my confusion over how the [drug-testing] whereabouts program worked.”
Rollins was not present for three random, out-of-competition drug tests in 2016, which constitutes a two-year ban under anti-doping rules. Rollins had that ban reduced by an arbitration panel to the shortest possible length — one year — given the circumstances and her drug-free record.
Two of the three missed tests came in September, one month after Rollins led a U.S. 100m hurdles sweep in Rio.
Rollins was in her Florida hometown to celebrate “Brianna Rollins Day” on Sept. 13. Two weeks later, she went to visit the White House with the U.S. Olympic team.
Drug testers showed up at Rollins’ Georgia home during both trips, but she wasn’t present as she previously stated that she would be. If Rollins had updated drug testers on her travel to Florida and Washington, D.C., as athletes are required to do, she would have avoided the missed tests.
A three-member arbitration panel stressed that Rollins is a clean athlete, showing “no evidence of avoiding testing, masking drug use, or using drugs.”
Rollins passed all 16 drug tests she took last year, but it’s the three tests that she was not present for that led to her ban.
Under U.S. Anti-Doping Agency rules, elite American athletes must provide a daily one-hour window for random testing, giving a specific location for drug testers to track them down.
If they have a change in plans, they must notify USADA.
Rollins conceded her negligence for the two September missed tests.
She disputed her first missed test from April 27, citing confusion in filling out her whereabouts on a computer program.
Rollins thought she had sufficiently updated her whereabouts for traveling to a meet in Iowa, but she failed to update the system that she would not be at her Georgia home during her daily one-hour window April 27.
A drug tester showed up at her Georgia home that morning, but Rollins was not present.
The three-member panel wrote in a 32-page summary that the computer system and the agencies connected with it “failed to design it to assist the athletes as much as possible to avoid confusion.” The panel also said Rollins still “failed to show a complete absence of negligence.”
“This is a difficult case because it involves the imposition of a serious penalty on a brilliant athlete who is not charged or suspected of using banned substances of any kind,” the panel wrote. “However, while there is much at stake for [Rollins], there is not much in dispute as to the facts or law of this case.”
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