NAGANO, Japan (AP) — Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati proudly held up the gold medal he won for a second time and said he was not going to change his friends, even if they smoked marijuana — the drug that almost got him kicked out of the Olympics.
“I may have to wear a gas mask from now on,” Rebagliati said a day after he was reinstated as his rebellious sport’s first Olympic champion when an appeals panel overturned a drug test that found traces of marijuana in his system.
Rebagliati argued successfully that the International Olympic Committee didn’t play by the rules when it stripped him of his prize.
He also contended that any signs of the drug had come not from marijuana he smoked but from that smoked by friends at a going away party in Whistler, British Columbia, last month.
Snowboarder reinstated
Published February 13, 1998
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