US Shot-Putter Admits Drug Use

OMAHA, Nebraska — Shot-putter Tressa Thompson of the United States said she withdrew from last week’s national Olympic trials after testing positive for drugs, the Omaha World-Herald reported on Thursday.

Expected to have been one of the three qualifiers for the US team going to Sydney, Thompson, 25, tested positive for cocaine, amphetamine and methamphetamine [known as ‘crank’] at a meeting last month in Portland, the newspaper reported the former University of Nebraska athlete as saying.

‘Right now, it seems like my life is down the drain. I’m just really lost right now,’ the newspaper quoted the 10-time All-American as saying.

A tearful Thompson admitted she took the drugs with friends two or three times this spring and summer out of curiosity and then ‘crossed her fingers’ that she wouldn’t be tested at a competition, the newspaper said.

But the US Olympic Committee told her of the positive test in a call on the Saturday before the trials’ shot-putting last Thursday and Friday in Sacramento, California. Thompson flew there, told her coach and withdrew. She is banned for two years.

She said she could have appealed and competed. But she decided it was best to pull out before she made the Olympic team and then was forced out, the World-Herald reported.

Thompson now is aiming for the 2004 Athens Games.

Reuters

Source: SOCOG