Former EF rider Lizzy Banks has opened up about her battle to clear her title after returning an opposed analytical discovering in a UK Anti-Doping take a look at final July.
The British racer was notified by UKAD of a constructive take a look at for bronchial asthma treatment Formoterol in addition to a low degree of the diuretic Chlortalidone “indicative of a contamination”.
Because of this, Banks has spent a lot of the previous 12 months making an attempt to clear her title, with UKAD insisting on handing her a two-year ban, she wrote in an entry on her personal website.
Banks wrote that following the 2 constructive assessments, she had “spent the final 9 months of my life investigating, researching, and writing my submissions to ascertain how the contamination occasion occurred” earlier than the case was finally handed to a tribunal.
She wrote that UKAD modified their place simply 5 days earlier than the tribunal, concluding that Banks was “not at any fault and had exercised an especially excessive degree of care always with a purpose to keep away from ingesting a prohibited substance.”
After months of getting ready for and preventing her case, UKAD finally got here to the conclusion that Banks bore “no fault or negligence” for the positives and would due to this fact keep away from any sanctions consequently.
“This course of has value me an enormous quantity, actually and metaphorically. My husband and I spent each penny of our financial savings and the massive psychological toll has left deep scars,” Banks wrote.
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“However someway, via all of it, I knew I needed to battle. Proper from the beginning, I learnt of different athletes in the same conditions with a contamination of chlortalidone, whose lives and careers had been additionally being torn aside.
“This course of pushed me proper to the sting and my concern that an athlete would transcend that edge is what drove me to attempt to incite important constructive change. With my background in medication, my luck in life to have had a superb schooling and eventually my dogged dedication, I actually believed that if I couldn’t battle the injustices on this system, then no athlete might.”
An interview with Banks revealed by The Telegraph on Tuesday states that Banks and her husband estimated that they’ve spent over £40,000 preventing the circumstances, including that she’s now ending her profession because of the ordeal.
Within the interview, Banks says that she “couldn’t threat placing her household via one thing like this ever once more” ought to she return to racing. Her retirement is official as of at present.
Banks estimates that 316 athletes could have examined constructive because of contamination in 2019, pointing the finger at WADA for ignoring the issue.
“WADA have recognized there was one thing up right here for years, and but they’ve not performed something about it,” she mentioned.
“How does WADA compensate athletes which were wrongly accused of dishonest? How do they offer them again these two years of life? Repay them for all of the misplaced earnings and authorized charges? Restore their shattered psychological well being? The quick reply is, they don’t.”
Now, and not using a biking profession to return to on the age of 33, Banks hopes that making the UKAD’s reasoned resolution on her case publicly accessible will help different athletes going via the identical factor in their very own related circumstances.
You possibly can learn Banks’ in-depth breakdown of her story and the battle towards the circumstances at her web site, lizzybanks.co.uk.
