Jeff Adams, 38, who has lived in Toronto for the last 17 years, has been exonerated by the CAS after a long fight.
The decision clears the way for Adams, one of the country's most successful Paralympians, to compete in Beijing this summer. Among other accomplishments, he's a former world record-holder in the 400-metre and 1,500-metre wheelchair races.
Adams was given a two-year ban following a competition in Ottawa in 2006. He was given a drug test after the event and the test found a common cocaine metabolite called benzoylecgonine (a by-product produced when the liver breaks down cocaine) in the quantity of three parts per billion.
It was his first-ever positive test after being tested literally "hundreds and hundreds of times."
And it was for a substance (cocaine) that's not performance enhancing, but is illegal.
"It's not a performance-enhancing substance," explained Adams. "It's a vasoconstrictor, which restricts the flow of blood. I was competing in a marathon (in Ottawa). The last thing you want to do is restrict the flow of blood to anything. It's the antithesis of a performance-enhancing drug in the context of the sport that I was engaged in."
Adams had an explanation. He claimed that on the weekend before the competition, he was in a bar when a woman apparently put a cocaine-laced finger in his mouth.
About an hour later, at home, Adams needed to urinate, which he does through a catheter. He then put the catheter in a storage pocket of his wheelchair. He didn't think anything of it until one week later in the aftermath of winning the Ottawa competition (a marathon), when he was asked for a urine sample for a routine drug test.
He used the catheter from the storage pocket of his wheelchair.
It was from this catheter — which he claims was contaminated, having been last used just after the cocaine incident the previous week — where the benzoylecgonine had to have come, he argued.
He steadfastly fought the ban at every level. He was unsuccessful, failing first to convince the Canadian Centre For Ethics in Sport to drop it, and then the subsequent doping tribunal to overturn it.
He then took it to the final step available to him in the process — the international CAS — and won.
Adams has carved out an illustrious racing career, which will culminate in his sixth straight Paralympic Games in Beijing, where he'll compete in the 1,500-metre wheelchair event.
He has also competed in three Olympic Games (where wheelchair events were demonstration sports) and numerous World and Canadian championships.
His medal collection from the five Paralympics alone is two gold, four silver and three bronze. He's also a six-time world champion.
