Harris to appeal doping suspension
Canada lead missed Scotties tournament due to violation
Briane Harris’s absence from Canada’s national women’s curling championship has officially been explained.
The 31-year-old from Winnipeg was declared ineligible to compete in the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Calgary hours before the Kerri Einarson rink played its opening game Feb. 16. The Einarson rink, Harris’s lawyer, Curling Canada and World Curling issued separate statements Tuesday confirming she had been banned due to a doping violation.
“Curling Canada was deeply disappointed to receive the news of Briane Harris’s adverse analytical finding on the opening day of the Tournament of Hearts,” a Curling Canada statement said.
Harris tested positive for trace amounts of ligandrol in an out-ofcompetition doping control test conducted Jan. 24. She got her positive results on the evening of Feb. 15 and informed Curling Canada of the violation the next morning.
She asked the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports, the body that conducts doping testing both in competition and outside of competition, to open her B sample and retest. It, too, was positive.
Curling Canada CEO Nolan Thiessen said in a video conference on Tuesday that at this point in the process the sport’s national governing body is a bystander and will abide by any legal ruling on the issue.
“She has her right to due process and the right to appeal,” Thiessen. “We totally support all of our athletes in any of these situations.”
Ligandrol is on the World AntiDoping Agency’s list of prohibited substances. It is used to increase energy and muscle growth. According to the United States Doping Agency, there is no medical use for the substance.
“As best as can be determined at this time, Ms. Harris was unknowingly exposed to the banned substance through bodily contact,” Harris’s lawyer Amanda Fowler in a statement. “In the circumstances, Ms. Harris is therefore keen to clear her name and will seek to expedite any process of mechanism to facilitate such vindication.”
Harris could face a two-year suspension under CCES regulations, although there is the flexibility to decrease or increase a sanction depending on the facts of a case and the results of tests.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, will hear Harris’s appeal.