The following article was first published in the Jamaica Gleaner on Friday 27th September, 2019.
You can read the entire article on their website HERE.
Dr Emir Crowne says the Independent Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel’s (IADP) decision to reprimand his client, Briana Williams, with no period of ineligibility was a “just and well-considered one”.
Williams faced the panel on Monday and Tuesday to determine whether she was at fault for a positive testing for the banned substance hydrochlorothiazide in June after the National Senior Trials. Williams’ team had argued that the substance was consumed through an over-the-counter medicine, which she took for a spell of influenza.
“Miss Williams is relieved that the matter has been put to rest,” Crowne told The Gleaner. “She was in tears when she found out the decision – tears of joy, no doubt.
“From our end, we’re just happy that the panel was able to do justice to the situation. All things being equal, we’re just happy that in the end, a just result was arrived at.”
NO INTENTION TO CHEAT
The IADP said in a statement yesterday that it finds that Williams has established no significant fault or negligence as she was given tablets by her guardian and had no intention to cheat in her In-Competition sprint event on June 21, 2019 (Trials). Along with the reprimand, the IADP recommended that the 17-year-old take part in an education programme on anti-doping in sport rules, undertaken by the Anti-Doping Commission.
Crowne cited five crucial points in his arguments made before the IADP that he assumed allowed it to arrive at its decision.
“In my closing, I gave them five mitigating factors to consider,” he said. “The main point was she’s a minor.
“The second point was the open declaration of everything she was taking: all were openly declared on her doping control form, which, as you know from previous cases, wasn’t always the case. Before she took the pills, she searched WADA’s (World Anti-Doping Agency) banned list. She went online and searched.
“Fourth, she then searched the Internet for the cold and flu medicine to see if anything negative arose there.
“Fifth, the evidence from Professor [Wayne] McLaughlin (a molecular biology professor in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, that that trace amount had no athletic enhancing effect for a sprinter and that that trace amount was probably consistent with some kind of environmental contaminant.
“All those are five big reasons for which the panel could hang its hat and perhaps did hang its hat.”
With this decision, Williams, who was provisionally named to Jamaica’s squad for the IAAF World Championships, starting in Doha, Qatar, today, had planned to travel to the Middle Eastern city to compete in the women’s 100m event. However, those plans have been scuppered by the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association’s decision to enter Jonielle Smith, who finished fourth, a place behind Williams at Trials. Smith will join former world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson in the event.
