Hurdler Suspended 90 Days for Skipping Test

Even while proclaiming that he was a victim of circumstances, hurdler Tonie Campbell said U.S. track and field officials had little choice but to suspend him after he refused to submit to a drug test in an indoor meet in February at Fairfax, Va.

“If they had let me off, I would have had to question it,” he said Tuesday from his Ontario, Calif., home after The Athletics Congress, which governs the sport in the United States, announced his 90-day suspension.

“Would it have been because I’m a nice guy? What if I had been dirty?”

Campbell, bronze medalist in the 1988 Summer Olympics in the 110-meter high hurdles and 1987 indoor world champion in the 60-meter hurdles, said that he never has used anabolic steroids or any other banned substances.

He said he refused to take the test because he was rushing to catch a plane from Washington to Atlanta and had no assurances that he would be reimbursed for his non-refundable airline ticket.

In a letter from TAC, Campbell was informed that “sufficient mitigating circumstances did not exist to justify being excused from compliance with TAC/USA and IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation) doping rules.”

But the three-member panel appointed by TAC to hear the case apparently was sympathetic, suspending him for only three months instead of the maximum two years normally recommended by the IAAF, the international governing body.

Unless the IAAF overrules TAC and insists on a longer suspension, Campbell, 28, said he will return to competition in the June 10 McDonald’s Jackie Joyner-Kersee Invitational at UCLA. His suspension, retroactive to his March 11 TAC hearing, ends on June 9.

Campbell said he believes he might have been exonerated if not for the air of suspicion hanging over the sport in light of recent allegations in the United States and Canada about widespread drug use by athletes and cover-ups by coaches and officials.

“The timing was really bad,” he said. “They (the TAC panel) told me that their hands were tied. If they had let me go, there would have been charges of favoritism against them. I understand.”

He said he considered an appeal but decided against it. As a member of TAC’s Athletes Advisory Council, Campbell said that he wanted to serve as an example to other athletes that doping rules cannot be taken lightly regardless of the circumstances.

“In some ways, I’ve been a victim,” he said. “But I have to follow the rules. If I had been let off, drug users would use me as an example of getting out of the tests. They could have said, ‘I have a plane to catch,’ or ‘I have a boat to catch.’ I don’t want to be used as that kind of an example.”

Realizing that he made a mistake in Fairfax, Campbell said he informed TAC the next morning of the situation. He said he volunteered to take a drug test that day at Atlanta, where he was conducting a clinic, and again the next Friday night after competing in an indoor meet at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Neither offer was accepted.

“I just hope that people don’t cast me in that same group with Ben Johnson because of this,” he said. “I’m a clean athlete who has always tried to do the right thing. I’ve taken over 200 drugs tests in a 10-year span. Not one found any blemish outside of an aspirin.”

In the future, Campbell said he would favor legislation to reimburse athletes for money lost on non-refundable plane tickets if they miss flights because they are detained because of drug testing.