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Campbell-Brown free to race with warning

Three-time Olympic sprint champion Veronica Campbell-Brown has been cleared to return to racing by a Jamaican disciplinary panel after testing positive.

A Jamaican disciplinary panel has given three-time Olympic gold medallist Veronica Campbell-Brown a public warning and cleared her to return to competition five months after she returned a positive doping test.

Campbell-Brown, one of the cornerstones of Jamaica's recent sprinting success, returned a positive test for a banned diuretic at the Jamaica International Invitational meet in May.

She was suspended while the disciplinary committee reviewed the case and missed Jamaica's national championships and the chance to race at the 2013 world championships in Moscow.

In a statement, the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association said its disciplinary 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.

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The full text of the ruling by a former judge, an attorney and the head of the island's medical association was not publicly released.

In June, a spokesman for the IAAF, the sport's world governing body, said the case involving Campbell-Brown appeared to involve a "lesser" offence of unintentional use of a banned substance.

A few weeks after Campbell-Brown's test, Jamaican sprinting stars Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson also tested positive and didn't attend the world championships in Moscow.

The incidents shocked many in Jamaica, where global domination in sprinting is a huge source of national pride.

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.

For Campbell-Brown, the sanction for a lesser offence could be a reduced penalty - a suspension of a few months to a year or a public warning - rather than a standard two-year ban.

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.

Athletes can receive a reduced sanction if they can prove how a substance was ingested.


2 min read

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Source: AAP


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