Gasquet cleared of doping charge after nightclub kiss

What the deuce! It's one of the more unusual explanations used as a defence in a doping case, but French tennis star Richard Gasquet's excuse for a positive drugs tests earlier in the year has been accepted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
 
It was back in March that Gasquet – then ranked 32 in the world – was tested for illegal substances while playing in the Sony Ericsson Open in Florida. Later examination of his urine showed the presence of small traces of cocaine metabolite.
 
The 23-year-old Frenchman was subsequently banned for 12 months by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in May but the same governing body then overturned the suspension two months later, saying "the cocaine entered his system through inadvertent contamination in a nightclub".
 
The 'inadvertent' turned out to be Pamela, a young lady Gasquet had wooed with his Gallic charm in a Miami nightclub. The Frenchman claimed it was while kissing Pamela au revoir that small traces of cocaine were unwittingly transferred from her to him.
 
The World Anti-Doping Agency and, bizarrely, the ITF, appealed to have the ban re-imposed and it was left to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to resolve the dispute.

In Thursday's announcement they accepted Gasquet's story and issued a statement saying: "The CAS panel decided to dismiss the appeals after having found that in this particular case Richard Gasquet had not committed any fault or negligence within the meaning of the ITF Anti-Doping Programme.

"The panel based its ruling on the evidence provided by the experts...[and] on a balance of probability, the CAS panel concluded that it was more likely that the player's contamination with cocaine resulted, as Gasquet always asserted, from kissing a woman in a nightclub on the day before the anti-doping test and that the player had met the required standards of proof with respect to the way of ingestion."
 
The news was greeted with delight by Gasquet who told French reporters: "I am totally relieved. I went through a nightmare for eight months. Mentally, it was very tough. I could have done without all this but now I'm happy to be back on the tennis courts. My goal is to make it back into the top 10."
 
'Pamela' was never called as a witness in the case and it is assumed she is still clubbing in Florida. One can only hope her affection for sportsmen didn't extend to golf stars, particularly those who live in the Sunshine State. ·