20 May 2008

Go Jeff Adams!

Exonerated and vindicated, although it cost nearly $1 million to accomplish. As The Globe reports today,
The flame-haired racing icon from Brampton, Ont., was exonerated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which accepted that Adams was the victim of an assault when a woman in a bar stuck cocaine in his mouth. The drug consequently tainted his catheter. Because he was not offered a sterile catheter for his doping test after racing in the 2006 Canadian marathon championship, the CAS ruled Adams was blameless when cocaine metabolytes showed up in his urine sample.
(I wrote about it here and here.) good on his lawyers for offering to reduce their fees if Jeff qualifies for the Paralympics. But he has little more than a month to qualify, and this after not having been able to race or have access to training for over a year. But with the determination of a true champion, Jeff has vowed to win a spot on Canada's Paralympic team for the Beijing games. He has also vowed to champion the fight for athlete's rights, a struggle that is sorely needed against a system that is BAH to the core: “One goal was to race again, the second goal is to be a champion for change,” he said. “We need to understand how the sport system engages against athletes,” he said of the processes that condemned him before his final appeal. “I promise Canadian athletes I'll stand up for their rights.

Go Jeff! I'll be rooting for you in September!

[Technorati tags: | ]

No comments: