Late, great spinner’s drug excuse listed as one of a kind

Cows, sex and toothpaste have all be mentioned in bizarre cases where nothing is as it seems. So how did the late, great, King of Spin get linked to the Chinese Olympics drug scandal?

TOKYO, JAPAN - JULY 31: (L - R) Silver medalists Xu Jiayu, Yan Zibei, Zhang Yufei and Yang Junxuan of Team China celebrate on the podium after the Mixed 4×100 metres medley relay on day eight of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo Aquatics Centre on July 31, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Fred Lee/Getty Images)

Shane Warne’s name can bob up in some unusual places but surely this was a first ... prime-time television in Germany.

The late, great spinner was not mentioned by name but his excuse for failing a drug test was listed by German broadcaster ARD among the most novel explanations by those who have failed dope tests.

“My mum gave me a pill to make me look thinner on TV,’’ were the words attributed to Warne by the station as the reason behind his one-year ban in 2003 for taking a banned diuretic pill allegedly given to him by his mother.

The strange thing about Warne’s excuse, odd though it sounded, was it was true. Image conscious Warne never said he wasn’t guilty. He admitted vanity got the better of him.

Shane Warne makes his way into a press conference in after arriving home, after he was thrown out of the World Cup after testing positive for drugs. Picture: AAP

Sometimes in drug-taking excuses the bizarre can be more believable than the routine explanations such as China’s reason for 23 swimmers failing a test to banned heart medication trimetazidine in the first days of 2021.

China alleges its investigators found traces of the drug in a kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers were staying and it somehow ended up in the food.

It sounds semi-reasonable until you probe a bit deeper and ask how, on god’s green earth, could that happen?

Are we suggesting someone left heart capsules lying in the kitchen and someone else mistook them for salt and pepper shakers and randomly sprinkled them into a flaming stir fry ... in the middle of the Covid era when hygiene protocols were off the charts?

C’mon …

The more you look into it the more unbelievable it seems.

But, imaginative though it sounds, the “kitchen cock-up’’ line does not even make the podium on the list of wacky excuses used by convicted drug takers.

The late, great, Shane Warne was linked to the Chinese Olympics drug scandal on German TV.

Czech tennis star Petr Korda, who returned a positive for the banned substance nandrolone after a match at Wimbledon in 1998, will always be a gold medal candidate for blaming his test on a “calf’’ injury … consuming too much nandrolone-fattened veal.

Korda delivered it with immense commitment and it sounded reasonable in theory until scientists said he would have to have eaten 40 calves a day for 20 years to reach the levels of nandrolone in his body present in the test. Cowabunga!

Colourful US sprinter Dennis Mitchell did not escape a ban for excessive levels of testosterone but made global headlines when he documented his excuse as having five beers and a long night of sex before the test.

Mitchell’s appeal was dismissed but he drew pockets of praise for at least going down swinging.

German distance runner Dieter Baumann from 1980s and ’90s, another nandrolone user, was banned for two years when authorities ignored his plea that it was all a conspiracy and dark forces had conspired to spike his toothpaste.

Some drug allegations go to the very top.

In 1999, Cuban high jumper Javier Sotomayor had his country’s president Fidel Castro stridently protesting his innocence on national television, claiming the FBI and “professionals of counter-revolution and crime’’ may have been involved in spiking his test with cocaine.

Castro had far less to say when the high jumper was caught using a more serious drug two years later and promptly retired, leaving his president red-faced and his standing clouded forever.

Originally published as Late, great spinner’s drug excuse listed as one of a kind