{"id":183,"date":"2015-01-20T11:12:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T11:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/drugs-in-sport\/?p=183"},"modified":"2015-01-20T11:12:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T11:12:48","slug":"welsh-pair-say-not-cheats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/featured\/welsh-pair-say-not-cheats","title":{"rendered":"Welsh pair say they are not cheats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rhys<\/a><\/p>\n

Gareth Warburton and Rhys Williams say they are not cheats after being banned for failing drugs tests.<\/p>\n

The Welsh athletes were “at fault or negligent” but had not knowingly taken anything containing the prohibited substances, says an official national anti-doping report\u00a0 published on Monday.<\/p>\n

Williams, 30, was banned for four months and Warburton, 31, for six.<\/p>\n

Warburton said: “I’m not a cheat. I’m a clean athlete. It’s a contaminated substance case.”<\/p>\n

The independent tribunal found neither athlete took enough advice before consuming Mountain Fuel supplements, some of which were contaminated with an anabolic steroid.<\/p>\n

Both athletes, who have now served their bans, have urged other athletes not to take sporting supplements after their experience with the contaminated blackcurrant-flavour energy drink.<\/p>\n

“My advice is not to take supplements at all and if you do take them, do the right checks,” said Warburton, who vowed to never again use such products.<\/p>\n

“There’s no way of knowing 100% that they’re safe so if you’re not 100% sure, don’t take them.”<\/p>\n

Asked if he felt his punishment was fair, Warburton replied: “Yeah, I think it is.”<\/p>\n

Warburton says he and Williams were “just unlucky” and that his ban has been accompanied by a \u00a310,000 financial loss, plus sponsors withdrawing their support.<\/p>\n

He added: “Emotionally it’s cost a lot… but I think I’ve come out as a better person.”<\/p>\n

Williams echoed Warburton when he said: “Parents will probably like it, it’ll save them money, but don’t touch supplements.”<\/p>\n

Former European 400m hurdles champion Williams added the case had cost him about \u00a3100,000 and claimed he should have been exonerated.<\/p>\n

“I should have received [a ban of] nothing because I’ve done nothing wrong,” said Williams.<\/p>\n

“And you look at the facts and figures and you can see that.”<\/p>\n

He added he was “baffled” by it all and said athlete education was not good enough if he and Warburton could be caught out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gareth Warburton and Rhys Williams say they are not cheats after being banned for failing drugs tests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,36,85],"tags":[90,99],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","category-track","category-uk","tag-gareth-warburton","tag-rhys-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/doping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}