Jamaica’s multi Olympic and World Championships gold medallist Veronica Campbell Brown has been cleared to resume her track and field career OBSERVER ONLINE has learned.
"The suggestion that [Veronica Campbell-Brown] was cleared on some technicality is simply not true. She was cleared because no anti-doping violation was proven and the reason none was proven was because she didn't do anything wrong, period, end of story," said attorney Howard Jacobs during a press conference yesterday at The Jamaica Pegasus. "It's not a technicality, it's a fundamental point," [Jacob] noted. "The question remained, what happened to the third sample?" "My inability to defend my 200m title was a huge loss. In fact, just being unable to compete was financially and emotionally devastating. This ordeal cost me in excess of 90 per cent of my possible earnings. The ripple effect affected my charities, most notably my foundation and my contribution towards my alma mater and others," said Campbell-Brown. "I now have a renewed appreciation for my talent and relationships within the sport that are important to me."
It was not just technicalities but serious blunders by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) in the collection of the urine samples of Veronica Campbell Brown which forced the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to exonerate the athlete from any doping violations.
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"I was scared for a bit (to come public) because everybody always know me as Novlene Williams-Mills and now they will know me as Novlene, the breast cancer survivor," Williams-Mills said. "It is approaching that time soon, being faced with breast cancer and for me, it is time to start thinking about my family and that is something I want to do soon," Williams-Mills shared. "I am just going to take it month by month and see everything, but I would love to be at the Commonwealth Games. I am not sure about Indoors as yet."
"We have to give God thanks for everything that we have accomplished and just look forward to 2012. We got a national record and I am really thankful to be a part of the team that did it. I'm grateful for my teammates and I think that with this team, we would definitely go far with more baton changes and we'll continue to give it our best shot," said [Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce]. Things didn't look too good for the Jamaicans in the semi-finals, which took place just over an hour prior to the final, as the baton exchanges between Fraser Pryce and [Kerron Stewart] on the first handover and Stewart and [Sherone Simpson] were terrible. But the latter believes that the experience of the girls helped to correct the problems in the short time that was available.
