Olympic hurdles champion Brianna McNeal insists on being clean after her doping suspension

Brianna
McNeal, an Olympic 100m hurdles champion, on Friday claimed that she was “clean” after she was suspended for the second time in her career due to doping. The
player posted a statement on her Instagram handle and disclosed that following
her suspension news on January 14, she had suffered an ankle sprain along with testing COVID-19
positive recently.

The
29-year-old US hurdler wrote on Instagram, “It has been a tough few
weeks, from the news, to spraining my ankle then getting COVID-19 in a span of
a week. As far as my situation goes, I am still me! Very clean, very honest and
transparent.”

Also read: Olympic hurdles champion Brianna McNeal suspended for doping violation

“Once all of this blows over I will provide more details of what’s
actually going on. The system is pretty messed up if you ask me but that’s
another topic for another day. I will be continuing to grind and do my absolute
best to stay afloat”, added McNeal.

The Athletics Integrity Unit informed last month that the
player had been suspended for “tampering” with part of a doping
control.

Also read: ‘I don’t speak to women much’: Tokyo Olympics chief, a day after controversy over sexist remark

She was earlier suspended in 2016 for a year by the
US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for failing to properly file whereabouts
information for out-of-competition after testing three times, reported AFP.

McNeal, the joint fourth-fastest runner in 100m hurdles
history has won gold in 2020 Rio de Janeiro Olympic and world gold in
Moscow in 2013 under her maiden name of Rollins.

Also read: Olympics will go ahead this summer regardless of COVID-19 situation: Tokyo 2020 chief

However, now following her second doping-linked career suspension,
the hurdler will miss this year’s Tokyo Olympics, which was
rescheduled due to COVID-19.