Rebecca Cohen
·2 min read
Sha'Carri Richardson questioned the decision to allow Kamila Valieva to compete in the Olympics after failing a drug test.
The American sprinter was not allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for marijuana.
"The only difference I see is I'm a Black young lady," Richardson said of the differing decisions.
Sha'Carri Richardson — the American sprinter who was not allowed to compete in the Tokyo Olympics last summer because she smoked marijuana after her mother died — says race seems to have influenced the decision to allow Kamila Valieva to compete in the Beijing Games after she, too, failed a drug test.
Video: The hidden costs of the 2022 Beijing Olympics
"The only difference I see is I'm a Black young lady," Richardson wrote on Twitter Monday after the decision concerning Valieva's participation was announced.
"Can we get a solid answer on the difference of her situation and mines?" she added. "My mother died and I can't run and was also favored to place top 3."
—Sha’Carri Richardson (@itskerrii) February 14, 2022
Valieva tested positive for the banned drug trimetazidine — a medicine usually used to treat angina attacks but is also known to improve endurance in athletes — in a December drug test. Once news of the failed test surfaced, the Russian 15-year-old was slapped with an immediate suspension from the games.
But the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reversed the decision Monday, paving the way for Valieva to compete in Tuesday's singles figure skating event. The teenager is a favorite to win gold, though the IOC announced that she would be ineligible to win a medal until her doping case is closed.
Richardson, meanwhile, was barred from competing at the Olympics by the US Anti-Doping Agency after testing positive for THC — the main psychoactive compound in marijuana — at Olympic trials before the Tokyo Games. On NBC's "Today," Richardson said she used marijuana upon learning of the death of her biological mother a few days before the US Olympic Team Trials began.
The USA Track & Field star said a reporter inadvertently broke the news of her biological mother's death. She used cannabis to cope with the state of "emotional panic" that ensued, she said.
"To hear that information come from a complete stranger, it was definitely triggering," Richardson said. "It was definitely nerve-shocking."
"No offense to him at all, he was just doing his job," she added. "But it put me in a state of mind of emotional panic."
Read the original article on Insider
