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TORONTO — The Court of Arbitration for Sport, in a unanimous decision, has cleared Canadian Paralympian Jeff Adams of a doping infraction for cocaine.
The six-time world champion wheelchair racer described the decision as a "total vindication."
"I'm exonerated," he said of the bizarre circumstances in which his urine sample at the 2006 Canadian marathon championship registered positive for cocaine metabolytes.
Adams has maintained an unknown woman in a Toronto bar shoved cocaine into his face a week before the 2006 Canadian championship in Ottawa. The catheter he was using to urinate became contaminated with cocaine residue. When he had to submit to an anti-doping test, officials of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport didn't supply a sterile new catheter. He was suspended for the past two years, his $18,000 annual government funding was cut off, and his work as a motivational speaker dried up, he said.
Canadian Jeff Adams celebrates after winning the men's 1,500 meters wheelchair race at the Golden League athletics meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, Friday, Aug.15, 2003. (Associated Press)
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Adams and his lawyer, Tim Danson, took the strategy of fighting the case as a human-rights issue, alleging the CCES wasn't offering the same level of security to athletes with disabilities as it does able-bodied athletes.
"It took two years to get here and, today, I'm ecstatic," Adams said in a telephone interview. "Now we want to make sure this never happens to another athlete in Canada."
He said the CAS made findings of fact in his favour. The three-judge panel concluded there was no prohibited substance in Adams's system at the time of the competition and there was no prohibited substance in his system at the time he was tested.
A statement released by Danson said the CAS "found as a fact that Adams was the victim of foul play, which led to a contaminated catheter, which produced the positive drug test."
The CAS panel was unanimous in the conclusion that Adams was not at fault and was blameless.
Adams has been reinstated to compete and his previous penalty of ineligibility for a period of two years is eliminated.
Adams has won 13 Paralympic and six world championship medals for Canada.
"I'll talk at a news conference [today] about whether I have time to qualify for the Beijing Paralympics," Adams said.
For those who scoffed at his tale of events in the bar, Adams noted that "police tell women to watch their drinks, because someone could slip a drug into it. We don't call bull on them when date rapes happen. These kinds of things happen … but when they happen to athletes, we're never believed."
He maintained all along that telling the truth was his only option, even if it sounded more bizarre and lurid than a fabricated alibi.
"Please believe me that if I had invented the story, it would have been entirely more plausible."
