Olympic gold medalist Gil Roberts claimed that kissing his girlfriend, Alex Salazar, while she was sick last spring resulted in the failed drug test
Olympic gold medalist Gil Roberts won an appeal for a doping case by claiming that he ‘passionately’ kissed his girlfriend while she was on medicine for an illness.
The 2016 Olympic athlete – who was part of the U.S. men’s relay that won – claimed that kissing his girlfriend, Alex Salazar, while she was sick and on antibiotics last spring resulted in him being exposed to a drug masking agent and a failed drug test.
‘There could have been tongue kissing, but it was more that she kissed me so soon after taking the medicine,’ Roberts said Thursday, after being exonerated, according to the New York Times.
Roberts tested positive for trace amounts of probenecid and was banned for up to four years from competing, potentially missing the 2020 Olympics.
Probernecid is a masking agent that sport regulators prohibit because of its usage to disguise drugs.
Three arbitrators sided with Roberts and stated ‘that the presence of probenecid in the athlete’s system resulted from kissing his girlfriend.’
Antidoping officials had appealed the primary decision that cleared Roberts last summer but testimony from Salazar ultimately aided his cause.
Roberts stated that Salazar had kept the illness hidden out of fear she wouldn’t get to spend as much time with Roberts.
Roberts – who won gold in the men’s relay during the 2016 Olympics tested -positive for trace amounts of probenecid and was banned for up to four years from competing, potentially missing the 2020 Olympics
Salazar testified that she’d gotten a sinus infection while on a family vacation in India where she then obtained a 14-day antibiotic – that is now out of production.
Claiming to have a disdain towards swallowing pills, Salazar testified that she would empty the capsule’s contents on her tongue.
And three-hours after an intense bit of ‘passionate kissing,’ Roberts had to give a urine sample, she testified.
Regulators argued that the story was ‘implausible’ – even as Roberts presented evidence of his girlfriend’s last antibiotic capsule that she hadn’t finished. He was called reckless and deemed at fault by officials.
‘I’m like, how can I be negligent for kissing my girl?’ Roberts asserted.
Salazar’s stepfather also testified and shared that he had used Hindi to help her buy Moxylong – an antibiotic amoxicillin with probenecid traces – from an area in semirural India.
‘We weren’t even embarrassed in the courtroom. It felt very technical,’ Roberts’s 24-year-old girlfriend explained.
French tennis player Richard Gasquet and Canadian pole-vaulter Shawn Barber had incidences where the kissed women with traces of cocaine in their system
‘We had passport stamps, receipts, and all of the dates lined up perfectly,’ she added, referring to the timeline of vacation, sickness and return home to Los Angeles in March 2017.’
Dr. Pascal Kintz, a professor from the University of Strasbourg, was brought from France to testify on Roberts’s behalf.
His 2009 testimony had been influential in getting French tennis player, Richard Gasquet, off for a similar case.
Gasquet claimed that a woman he kissed repeatedly in a nightclub in Miami, named Pamela, had had cocaine on her lips the night before he would play in a tournament.
A tennis doping panel found that he had acted recklessly at fault by engaging with the stranger. But the Court of Arbitration for Sport overuled the verdict, and gave no punishment – what they would eventually do for Roberts
Dr. Pascal Kintz, a professor from the University of Strasbourg, was brought from France to testify on Roberts’s behalf
‘Even when exercising the utmost caution, the player could not have been aware of the consequences that kissing Pamela would have on him,’ sports arbitrators wrote in their decision about Gasquet.
Gasquet sued the woman so that he could get a sample of her hair and prove that she had cocaine in her system as his own sample disproved that he had it in his.
Canadian pole-vaulter Shawn Barber also used a similar defense in 2016 after an intimate night with a Craigslist hookup, the night before Olympic trials, left him with a low-level cocaine violation.
When the International Tennis Federation issued an appeal of Gasquet’s case, their lawyer, Jonathan Taylor, asserted that the fault lied with athletes when substances were found in their system.
‘They will only avoid a ban in very exceptional cases, where they can show that they took every reasonable precaution,’ Taylor said.
He added that athletes lower the precautions they take the more intimate a space is and that more scientific evidence would be needed to validate future kissing claims.
For Salazar, however, the incident has also raised her own sense of awareness.
‘Before I even take DayQuil, it crosses my mind,’ she said. ‘Anything I take now, I think twice before I even go near him.’