Athletics: Moore Escapes Drug Ban With 'passive' Smoking Plea

Jonathan Moore, one of Britain's most talented and versatile young athletes, has been given a public warning after testing positive for cannabis but has avoided a ban because he claimed he had ingested the drug passively.

The 20-year-old Birmingham long and triple jumper, tipped as a potential future Olympic champion, tested positive at a meeting in Merksem, Belgium, on September 4, where he won the long jump with an effort of 7.82 metres.

Under the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency cannabis is deemed as being illegal because it is considered to be "against the spirit of sport, rather than performance-enhancing".

A statement from UK Athletics said: "He accepted that the substance was in his sample but stated that he had not smoked cannabis and it must have been due to passive smoking. He wavered his right to a disciplinary hearing."

Moore's father and coach, Aston, claimed this year that his son had the ability in the next three or four years to challenge Christian Olsson, the Olympic and world triple jump champion.

Moore, the 2001 world youth triple jump champion and the British junior long jump record holder with 8.03m, had spent this season re-establishing himself after suffering a serious knee injury in 2002.

Moore, voted British Athletics Writers' Association junior athlete of the year two years ago, is not the first young British sportsman to test positive for cannabis. Others include Lee Bowyer, who tested positive for the drug while a youth team player at Charlton Athletic, and the swimmer Mark Foster.

Nor is Moore the first to employ the passive smoking defence. In 1998 the Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was allowed to keep the gold medal he won at the Winter Olympics in Nagano after testing positive for cannabis.

He said he had given up smoking cannabis before he decided to compete in the Olympics and argued that the drug traces in his urine probably came from second-hand smoke at a party he attended in Whistler before travelling to Japan.

Moore has been warned by UK Athletics that, if he tests positive again for cannabis, he will be given a two-year suspension.