Using P brings two-year suspension
Manawatu¯ Cyclones player Aroha Nuku has been banned from rugby for two years after testing positive to methamphetamine.
Nuku claims to have thought she was taking Ritalin to help keep her awake on her drive home from training, a claim backed up by one of her team-mates.
She was facing a ban of four years, but a New Zealand Rugby judicial committee accepted that her use of methamphetamine was not intentional under its drugs rule, so imposed a two-year ban.
However, Drug Free Sport New Zealand chief executive Nick Paterson said Nuku was reckless in taking the unknown substance. Ritalin itself is also prohibited in sport.
‘‘Ms Nuku received anti-doping education at the beginning of the
2017 rugby season and a range of
2017 clean sport collateral was available at the education seminar.
‘‘We are disappointed that she took the white powder she was offered, especially as she would have been aware of the risks involved.
‘‘This is yet another cautionary tale for other athletes and their support personnel to be extremely mindful of what substances they are taking. Athletes are 100 percent responsible for what they put into their bodies.’’
Nuku had admitted the breach and NZR announced her ban yesterday.
The charge resulted from a failed routine drug test taken after Nuku played for the Cyclones in their round four match of the Farah Palmer Cup against Waikato on September 22 last year.
That test revealed that both her A and B samples were positive for methamphetamine and D-amphetamine/Dextroamphetamine. Nuku, who has played for the Cyclones for several years, said she took a powder that a teammate told her was Ritalin to help keep her awake on a 21⁄2-hour drive home to Hawera after training in Palmerston North.
Drug Free Sport NZ noted in the hearing that Nuku had attended a mandatory seminar earlier that season and on the night she was drug tested, she declared the use of two supplements and hay fever tablets, but did not declare the use of Ritalin earlier that week.
The judicial committee found that despite some misgivings, it accepted Nuku’s evidence about how the banned substances came to be present in the drug test.
Nuku’s suspension from all rugby for two years was backdated to begin from September 22, 2017.