I’m hurt by all the talk of cheating

I WAS on holiday in Turkey with my parents on Friday night when my phone rang and my manager told me that my private medical information had been posted on the internet — on to the Fancy Bears website that has set out to ‘expose’ people who misuse TUE certificates to take performance enhancing drugs.

I was devastated that people might think I was a drugs cheat. The truth is I have a serious medical condition called ulcerative colitis. The drugs I take actually make my performance worse, so you could never describe them as ‘performance enhancing’. I take the drugs because without them I would be seriously ill.

My colitis has made life difficult; I can’t train as much as I want to and I have had to make all sorts of adjustments in my life because of it. I’d never play the ‘poor me’ card, but I really wish I didn’t have it. The only reason I talk about it is because I know it helps other people with the illness to hear it mentioned, and to see that someone with the disease has been really successful in sport.

I was first diagnosed with colitis after London 2012. I was seriously ill for the whole year — I was in a really bad way, losing a lot of weight and feeling dreadful. I had loads of tests and my gastroenteritis specialist gave me a prescription. I then gave that to the Team GB doctor to check it was OK. He said that it wasn’t; I couldn’t take the drugs I’d been prescribed until I had a TUE. It’s quite a difficult procedure getting a TUE.

I know people have the impression that it’s easy to get them and that they are a simple way to cheat, but they’re really not easy to get. The point of a TUE is to allow someone who is ill to take their medicine. That’s what happened to me, and I’m really upset that anyone might think otherwise. We need to sort out a system that works properly both for TUEs and ensuring a level playing field for all athletes.