From the AP, an interview with California's Jessica Hardy, on the eve of her return to competitive swimming after a positive drug test at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Trials -- an event that turned into the debacle that denied Bremerton's Tara Kirk a rightful place on the team.
From the AP, an interview with California’s Jessica Hardy, on the eve of her return to competitive swimming after a positive drug test at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Trials — an event that turned into the debacle that denied Bremerton’s Tara Kirk a rightful place on the team.
Recall that an arbitration panel ruled this spring that Hardy’s original two-year ban should be reduced to one after hearing evidence that she tested positive for the banned anabolic agent clenbuterol accidentally, through a nutritional supplement widely used by swimmers. They sought to amend her punishment to make her eligible for the 2012 London Olympics, saying she already had missed an Olympics in Beijing.
Her status for those Games remains unclear, however. FINA, the sport’s governing body, has appealed that decision to the international Court for Arbitration of Sport, saying she should be Olympic ineligible because of a new rule that makes any athlete banned for six months or more for a doping violation automatically suspened from the succeeding Olympics.
The veracity of Hardy’s accidental-doping claim also remains less than clear. She and the supplement’s manufacturer, Advocare International, have sued each other, citing product-sample test results reaching opposite conclusions about the presence of illegal substances. The suits are pending.
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Hardy will swim the 100 freestyle at the U.S. Open championships. Kirk, an Athens Games medalist who ultimately received an undisclosed cash settlement from U.S. swimming, which failed to get test results in time to place her on the Olympic team in Hardy’s place, has retired from competitive swimming.