Sha’Carri Richardson is expressing her regrets a year after appearing on the Today show following her removal from Team USA due to a positive marijuana test.
On Tuesday, Richardson tweeted a response to her nearly year-old interview on Today that came on the heels of learning about her suspension from competing in the Tokyo Olympics due to cannabis use.
“I wish I had the choice when it was time for me to tell my story,” the 22-year-old track and field sprinter wrote.
Richardson faced public scrutiny last July when she was suspended from Team USA just ahead of the kickoff for the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for THC, the chemical found in marijuana.
Despite testing positive in Oregon, where recreational cannabis use and possession are legal, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and USA Track and Field still consider marijuana a banned substance, NY Post
reports.Richardson’s recent tweet comes a week after she called out the USADA, the company behind the drug testing and education for Olympic athletes.
“Once again @usantidoping give(s) us all these rules but can not follow themselves,” Richardson tweeted.
“Stop giving us rules that y’all can bend just to get more money. The ones behind the desk who probably [have] never been a high level athlete need to be held accountable at the same level as the athletes!”
She doubled down on Instagram while demanding “transparency” from the USADA and Olympic athletes.
“It’s sooo much more that these doping organizations don’t tell the public !!! Give the transparency to us that you force us as athletes to give to these organizations and the TO THE PUBLIC for better understanding !!!”
In February, Richardson called out the IOC for allowing teenage Russian skater Kamila Valieva to participate in the Beijing Olympics despite testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The IOC claimed that different rules apply to minors and that Valieva was a “protected person.”