Briana Williams, the 17-year-old sprint double winner at the 2018 IAAF World U20 Championships and the newly minted American high school national record holder in the 100 meter dash has tested positive for a banned diuretic, the Jamaican news outlet The Gleaner, reported in a bombshell on Tuesday.
The independently coached Jamaican athlete, who is based out of south Florida and has one year left of high school, works with Olympian Ato Boldon and qualified for the IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Doha, Qatar, for the Jamaican women's national team at 100 meters between June 20-23.
Williams ran 10.94 seconds to finish third in the finals of the women's race, booking the last available slot for the Jamaican women. It was in this race where Williams broke 11 seconds for just the second time since 2015 and ran the fastest American high school effort all-time.
Afterward, Williams' A sample was tested and found the presence of the diuretic Hydrochlorothiazide. The Gleaner reported that Williams' first sample was tested at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in Canada. Prior to the National Championships, Williams had claimed cold and flu medicine she had used on her drug testing form.
Then, according to The Gleaner, Williams' advisement sent the flu medicine to an independent lab in Michigan, which confirmed the presence of the banned diuretic.
Williams' team denied knowledge of the diuretic in the cold medicine prior to it being found in the A and B sample.
Diuretics, according to experts, works to mask the presence of other substances.
Williams' lawyer, Dr. Emir Crowne, told The Gleaner that he had not heard of a failed 'B' test yet. When reached on Tuesday, Boldon also declined to comment beyond what Crowne revealed in the Jamaican outlet.
Per the report, which you can read in full here, is Crowne's comments:
"Our primary position will be that Ms Williams bears no fault in the circumstances and there should be no sanctions levied against her. That will be our primary position. It will be an uphill battle, but this is one of the truly genuine times, when there was nothing more that the athlete could do in the circumstances. Failing a finding of no fault whatsoever, then we will rely on a finding of no significant fault because again it's a contaminated product and under the WADA Code and JADCO code, the minimum sanction is a reprimand, so we will be asking, in light of the circumstances (that she receives a reprimand). We want to be very clear that we were not the ones, who revealed that it was in fact Briana Williams and we are a bit concerned that the information has come to light between her A sample and requesting her B sample being tested. We remain very concerned how her name came to light. Quite frankly, we have not received any notice of the results of her B sample yet. I emailed JADCO to follow up and we have no official communication from JADCO whatsoever about that.
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