Eimear Ryan: A young athlete like Sha'Carri Richardson should not have to insist on her humanity
EUGENE, OREGON - JUNE 19: Sha'Carri Richardson runs and celebrates in the Women's 100 Meter semifinal on day 2 of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials at Hayward Field on June 19, 2021 in Eugene, Oregon. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
.
These three words were tweeted by Sha’carri Richardson at the beginning of the month, shortly after her meteoric ascent as one of Team USA’s brightest hopes at the Tokyo Olympics. The 21-year-old had become a gold-medal favourite in late June when she won the 100m at the United States Olympic Trials.
With her tattoos, tangerine wig, and long, Flo-Jo inspired acrylic nails, the charismatic Richardson quickly became a fan favourite.
Her personal story grabbed attention, too: Her mother had died less than a week before her incredible performance at the trials, making her win even more impressive. And when she tweeted a rainbow on her day of triumph, during Pride month, the internet rallied to her. At a time when Carl Nassib was winning plaudits for becoming the first active NFL player to come out as gay, some liberal commentators pointed to Richardson as the more worthy LGBT athlete icon; unlike Nassib, she wasn’t a registered Republican.
Richardson’s day in the sun was short lived.
On July 1, the story broke that she had tested positive for marijuana and her win in the trials had been invalidated, thus revoking her qualification for the Olympics. She was also handed down a one-month suspension beginning 28 June. Now, that tweet — I am human — took on a new significance: A statement of fact, a reminder, and a plea. The internet discourse turned on her as quickly as it had embraced her, with commentators denigrating her as a role model, criticising her for trying to explain herself, and repeating the mantra that ‘rules are rules’.
Which they are. But rules should also serve a purpose — which is to prevent cheating, not merely catch people out in a behaviour that some might frown upon.
The story is full of the sort of nuance and shades of grey that generates endless discussion — and may even bring about change down the line.
Richardson said that she had smoked marijuana to cope with the stress from her mother’s death, and it’s legal in Oregon, where she was at the time. In fact, the widespread legalisation of recreational marijuana use in many US states has muddied the waters. In practical terms, marijuana is now no more controversial than nicotine or alcohol: A vice, sure, but a widely available and legal one.
Far from a performance enhancer, cannabis spikes heart rates and increases blood pressure levels, actually hampering most people’s athletic performance. (The counter-argument is that it relaxes many users and quells race-day nerves — a possible advantage, but a highly subjective one.)
In recent years, major American sports leagues including the NFL, hockey, and baseball have removed penalties for marijuana use, and the NBA has stopped carrying out randomised tests for marijuana. In this context, athletics’ marijuana ban looks increasingly like a ‘blue law’ — one of those strange archaic laws prohibiting snowball-throwing or eating ice-cream on Sundays — that somehow remains on the books past all practical use.
The argument quickly turned political. President Biden was one of the first to invoke the ‘rules are rules’ line of thinking: “The rules are the rules and everybody knows what the rules were going in. Whether they should remain the rules is a different issue, but the rules are the rules.”
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, by contrast, wrote a letter to the United States Anti-Doping Agency calling on them to reverse Richardson’s ban, claiming that the decision “lacks any scientific basis. It’s rooted solely in the systemic racism that’s long driven anti-marijuana laws.”
Richardson's predicament reflects a more serious injustice in the wider culture, which is that there are still over 40,000 Americans incarcerated for marijuana offences committed in the past, at a time when the legal cannabis industry is booming.
Richardson even found support from unlikely quarters, including Donald Trump Jr, who tweeted: “Let her compete, I’m pretty damn sure weed has never made anyone faster.”
This was, in essence, Richardson’s defence too. She insisted she had never taken performance-enhancing drugs:
That word again.
Many fans held out hope that Richardson would still feature at the Olympics by being chosen for the US women’s 4x100m relay team. In relay, track officials are entitled to two ‘wild card’ picks, i.e. athletes who haven’t qualified via the trials. The relay is also scheduled to take place after Richardson’s one-month ban is up, which would allow her to compete. But officials elected not to name Richardson in the squad, suggesting it would be unfair to the other athletes who had qualified — which is an understandable perspective too.
Richardson has been stoic since the incident, issuing an apology and pleading for understanding rather than bemoaning her treatment by the authorities.
But it’s still been a traumatic and whirlwind few weeks for a 21-year-old on the world stage; talented young sportspeople have been ruined by less. She may have to watch someone else win gold in a slower time than the startling 10:84 she recorded in the trials. She will have other chances, but four years is a long wait. She’s only human.
In saying all this, one could just as easily be talking about Saka or Sancho or Rashford.
When young athletes succeed, they’re heroic, superhuman, untouchable. When they fail — whether that’s through a personal slip-up or a sporting one — we go after them with the same vehemence and intensity that we once lauded them.
Regardless of whether we treat them as heroes or villains, we’re still othering them, treating them as something different to ourselves.
A young athlete should not have to insist on her humanity, but apparently this is where we are.
