Brianna Williams tests positive for banned substance, reports say

The Ja­maica Glean­er news­pa­per has re­port­ed that 17-year-old world un­der 20 sprint cham­pi­on, Bri­an­na Williams has al­leged­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for the banned di­uret­ic Hy­drochloroth­iazide (HCTZ).

Ac­cord­ing to Williams’ lawyer Dr. Emir Crowne, the sub­stance was con­firmed present in the ath­lete’s B sam­ple from tests car­ried out at the Ja­maica Na­tion­al Se­nior Cham­pi­onships from June 20 – 23. The ath­lete’s ‘A’ sam­ple was orig­i­nal­ly test­ed at the World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency (WA­DA) ac­cred­it­ed lab in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da. How­ev­er, Crowne is ques­tion­ing how this in­for­ma­tion was made pub­lic as he is yet to re­ceive con­fir­ma­tion.

“Quite frankly, we have not re­ceived any no­tice of the re­sults of her B sam­ple yet. I emailed JAD­CO to fol­low up and we have no of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from JAD­CO what­so­ev­er about that,” said Crowne.

Crowne al­so told The Glean­er that he will be seek­ing an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing and will be con­test­ing that the 17 year-old had no fault in the cir­cum­stances and there­fore, should not face any sanc­tions.

The Glean­er ar­ti­cle goes on to ex­plain that a well-placed source, which re­quest­ed anonymi­ty re­vealed that Williams’ team has point­ed to a con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed cold and flu med­ica­tion, which im­por­tant­ly, she had de­clared on her test­ing pro­to­col form, as the source of the banned sub­stance.

Ac­cord­ing to the Glean­er, on Ju­ly 25, Williams and her team were ad­vised of an ad­verse an­a­lyt­i­cal find­ing in her ‘A’ sam­ple from the Na­tion­al Se­nior Cham­pi­onships, where she placed third in the 100m in 10.94 sec­onds.