Boyle in hot water

Boyle in hot water
BEVERLEY SMITH - Globe and Mail

June 6, 2007

A little lack of judgment has landed duathlete Shari Boyle in a lot of trouble.

After two separate blunders - drinking herbal tea and then failing to complete an out-of-competition drug test - Boyle has been banned from the sport until Sept. 3, 2009.

Boyle was already serving a one-year suspension for a positive ephedrine test (which she believed was from ingesting herbal tea) when a couple of doping officers from the Canadian Centre of Ethics in Sport arrived at the track and field centre at York University on March 20 to test her for drugs.

Before her test, Boyle, 34, of Toronto, disappeared from sight of a chaperone, and then left the facility, without telling the officers. She later explained that she had taken violently ill and threw up in the washroom before her roommate took her home. Boyle said she was not trying to evade the testing, but that she had "compelling justification" for missing it.

Arbitrator Graeme Mew ruled that Boyle's account "lacks a ring of credibility," and that her behaviour defied common sense.

The arbitrator handed down a suspension of two years, but it won't start until her current one-year suspension ends Sept. 3. Because of the test refusal, Boyle also became permanently ineligible to receive any financial support from Sport Canada.