Gold winner: take cannabis off ban list

MONTREAL: With Canada about to legalise marijuana, the World AntiDoping Agency (Wada) should remove cannabis from its banned list of drugs, Canadian Ross Rebagliati says.

Rebagliati’s Olympic snowboard gold medal was taken away after he tested positive for the drug, then subsequently returned on a technicality.

Wada, which fights the use of drugs in sport, is based in Montreal, where 12 marijuana shops are due to open today.

Wada continues to ban the recreational drug.

For athletes, the dread of being busted for smoking a joint remains, with cannabinoids such as cannabis, hashish and marijuana prohibited from incompetition use.

‘‘I think it’s time. It’s overdue actually,’’ Rebagliati, who won gold at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, said, referring to removing cannabis from Wada’s banned list.

‘‘If athletes are allowed to consume alcohol and tobacco, let them have weed. It is the only thing that is good for you of those three things.’’

Rebagliati (47) now runs a company focusing on cannabidiol consumables, nutrients and home growing kits. Cannabidiol is the marijuana extract used for medicinal purposes.

In 1998, the International Olympic Committee introduced snowboarding for the Winter Games. The first gold went to Rebagliati.

He was disqualified and stripped of his medal when testers found traces of cannabis, then reinstated on the technicality that marijuana was not on the banned list.

‘‘My medal was the only medal in Olympic history that has ever been given back.’’

Twenty years later, if the Olympics were held today, Rebagliati would not get his medal back, with the drug now on Wada’s banned list.