Grace Nwokocha blames Nigerian teammate for positive dope test at Commonwealth Games

Grace Nzubechi Nwokocha insists she did not knowingly ingest performance enhancing substances and instead, she blamed one of her Nigerian teammates of foul play.

Nwokocha was on Friday officially stripped of her medal and the times she ran in the three races she competed in at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last August.

This means Nigeria has been stripped of the gold medal the quartet of Tobi Amusan, Rosemary Chukwuma, Favour Ofili and Nwokocha won in the women’s 4x100m event at the Games.

Nigeria is also stripped of the 42.10s African record the quartet ran on their way striking gold at the Games.

Nwokocha, in her defence through her solicitors, says she was tested on July 27, 2023 and the result came out negative.

She said between July 28 and July 31st and that the said ingestion of the prohibited substances happened on August 1.

According to her solicitors, ‘Grace Nwokocha arrived in the UK on 27th July 2022. She then went straight to Athletes’ Village which she entered in the early hours of 27th July 2022.

Later that same morning she was tested and the result was negative. Unequivocally, there was no presence of any prohibited substance (including
metabolites) in her system.

Therefore, there was no ingestion of a contaminated product before 28th July 2022 at the date she entered the athletes’ village of the Commonwealth Games.

Thereafter, Grace Nwokocha practised and trained from 28th July 2022 up until 1st August 2022 in the evenings between approximately 16.00 until 18.00 – 18.30.

In that period all the fluids and food were provided by the Commonwealth Games Village and accordingly, there was no ingestion of a prohibited substance, by
contamination or otherwise, up to 1st August 2022.

Also of note, on 28th July 2022, another particular athlete (a fellow team mate) trained with her. Grace Nwokocha recalls seeing the other athlete using her water without her permission on 28th July 2022.

She told her in clear terms not to do so, and that she did not have permission. Grace Nwokocha, herself, did not drink from that particular bottle thereafter.

The unknowing ingestion of a prohibited substance by a contaminated product occurred on 1st August 2022.

The facts are that having taken a break in her training, Grace Nwokocha went to take a drink from her bottle of Lucozade that she kept in her bag, as precaution.

Her practice was/is to broadly assess the level of the liquid in the bottle to try and detect if others had drunk from it.

The bottle was a transparent bottle with a Lucozade label wrapped around it, which covers part of the bottle, making it difficult to assess the exact amount of liquid within the bottle.

She then drank from the bottle of Lucozade, but realised immediately that the level was lower than she suspected and she took it from her mouth, but by this
time she has ingested a small amount.

On further consideration the level indicated to her that another athlete had drunk from the bottle (without her permission). She concluded that this was her colleague, who had done so on a previous occasion.

Grace Nwokocha stopped drinking from the bottle as soon as she suspected that another athlete had drunk from it without her permission.

Thereafter, there were then races on 2nd (Heats) and 3rd August (for semi-final and Final), but no liquid was drunk by a third party from any drinks obtained by Grace Nwokocha.

Accordingly, the inadvertent ingestion of a contaminated product occurred on 1st August 2022 in the Commonwealth Village. She was tested on 3rd August 2022 which returned an adverse analytical finding.

Subsequently, Grace Nwokocha was tested again on 7th August 2022 and had a negative result. This demonstrates that, irrespective of the facts relating to the
inadvertent ingestion of a contaminated product, there is good reason to question the accuracy of the test result on 3rd August 2022, as emphasised in
correspondence on her behalf.