A Jamaican disciplinary panel has given the three-time Olympic gold medallist Veronica Campbell-Brown a public warning and have cleared her to return to competition after she failed a doping test for a banned diuretic at an athletics meeting in May.
Campbell-Brown served a suspension whilst the disciplinary committee reviewed the case which meant that she missed the Jamaican trials and the 2013 IAAF World Championships in Moscow.
In a statement, the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) said “The disciplinary committee has issued a ruling that Veronica Campbell-Brown has committed an anti-doping violation, contrary to IAAF Rule 32.2a, ” however the committee “recommended that a reprimand without any period of ineligibility would be appropriate.”
It ruled that Campbell-Brown “committed an anti-doping violation” but did not use the banned substance for performance enhancement.
Campbell-Brown had tested positive for the banned diuretic hydrochlorothiazide, which is on the World Anti-Doping Agency ‘s banned list as a masking agent.
Sources close to Jamaican athletics told Reuters at the time that the diuretic was contained in a cream that Campbell-Brown was using to treat a leg injury that she had declared on her doping form. In June, a spokesman for the IAAF said the case involving Campbell-Brown appeared to involve a “lesser” offence of unintentional use of a banned substance.
Campbell-Brown has been one of the stars in Jamaica’s sprinting success of recent years however a few weeks after it was announced she had tested positive fellow sprinting stars Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson also tested positive, much to the shock of fans across the world.
Powell, the former world 100m record holder, and Simpson, an Olympic 400-relay silver medallist, are scheduled to appear before a Jamaican disciplinary panel in January.
In 2009, Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake and three other islanders received reduced suspensions of three months after testing positive for a banned stimulant.
Under the World Anti-Doping Code, some diuretics are classified as a “specified substance “, a designation for drugs that might have been consumed without intent to enhance performance and athletes can receive a reduced sanction – which can range from a reduced suspension of a few months to a year or a public warning – if they can prove how a substance was ingested.
