Throughout the years there have been some crazy explanations given by top level athletes after they receive a doping ban.
However, the latest high-profile case in the sport of athletics is quite something.
It comes from US Olympic high-jumper Inika McPherson.
McPherson competed at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and is a two-time American national indoor champion.
The 36-year-old competed at the 2019 World Championships in Doha and more recently was fourth at the US Championships last summer.
Now McPherson is to receive a 16-month sanction for testing positive for a prohibited substance.
McPherson tested positive for furosemide following an out-of-competition urine sample collection in June last year.
The drug is usually used to treat high blood pressure and can be used as a masking agent, helping the body rid itself of evidence of doping through urination before testing occurs.
McPherson believed that the drug she was taking was an anti-inflammatory which she had gotten from a friend, who had taken it from her grandmother.
Inika McPherson with a wild explanation after getting a 16-month ban for using a masking agent/diuretic.
Says she thought it was an anti-inflammatory and got it from a friend, who took it from her grandmother.
How did they get mixed up? Apparently the grandmother has dementia. pic.twitter.com/OLvQdflWOI— Cathal Dennehy (@Cathal_Dennehy) April 14, 2023
McPherson's friend Marnesiya Holmes took the pill from her grandmother who suffers from dementia. Holmes grandmother had apparently mixed up her prescriptions.
Holmes said in her witness statement that she eventually learned that the pill bottle that her grandmother had told her contained her anti-inflammatory pills also contained several furosemide pills "by accident."
McPherson took the drug without asking any questions in an effort to ease an injury in her heel.
At the start of June when drug testers showed up at her home to get her to fill out a routine doping control form, McPherson declared seven supplements and medications that she had taken in the prior seven days but failed to declare the pill that Ms Holmes had provided her.
She claimed that she had “really just forgot” to include the pill Holmes had given her on the doping control form.
Some will believe that McPherson has got off lightly considering it is not the first time that McPherson has been caught up in a doping scandal.
At the 2014 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, she tested positive for benzoylecgonine, the main metabolite of cocaine and was given a doping ban of 21 months.
She claimed once again that this was unintentional, blaming it on smoking cigars at a party.
SEE ALSO: Phenomenal Rhasidat Adeleke Destroys Her Own Irish 200m Record
