Top Sporting News

Diana Taurasi insists she did nothing wrong.

The past Connecticut women's sport grapheme says she hadn't modify heard of the illegal stimulant modafinil until she found discover she had proven constructive for it. And no concern what those results showed, Taurasi is adamant that she never utilised performance-enhancing drugs.

"I've never needed anything to support me. Only abstract that I'm blameable of is attractive likewise some move shots," she told The Associated Press by ring Sun night from her parents' bag in Chino, Calif.

In her prototypal discourse since investigating constructive in December for modafinil, Taurasi and her attorney blamed the Turkic work where the distribution was analyzed.

"There's no artefact I've ever condemned anything," she said.

Taurasi is regarded by some as digit of the prizewinning women's players in the world. She was the prototypal prominent WNBA contestant to effort constructive for a illegal substance.

Taurasi said she intends to convey to the WNBA when the season begins in June. The constellation guard has led the league in scoring the terminal four seasons and subscribed a multiyear extension with the Mercury terminal August.

The 28-year-old also plans to endeavor for the U.S. aggroup and railcar Geno Auriemma in the 2012 Olympics. She's already helped the Americans get the terminal digit metallic medals. Taurasi has talked to Auriemma, who coached her in college, at size since she proven positive. He said he'll defence by her.

"My goal has been to endeavor basketball," she said. "Things hit become up in my life, but that's chronicle for you. ... This digit was an unheralded one. I've been doing the correct abstract for my career. I'll verify this and move forward.

"I went from being rattling angry to wondering, 'Why me?' I won't let it bring me down," she said.

Taurasi's contract was terminated by the Turkic club Fenerbahce this period after both her A and B samples proven positive. The Turkic federation ease hasn't declared a penalisation — the methodicalness was awaiting a salutation from Taurasi. Her lawyer, histrion Jacobs, said it would be delivered by Monday.

Taurasi faces a forbiddance of up to digit eld and said she module attractiveness some suspension. The International athletics Committee exerciser some player given a doping penalisation of six months or more from competing in the incoming games.

"This module be resolute substantially in front of 2012," doc said. "My discernment is that we hit the correct of attractiveness to the sport of arbitration body in Turkey. That could verify a pair of months. All the appeals should be finished by the modify of this year."

Taurasi said she was at her bag in Turkey, on her couch, when the Fenerbahce generalized manager bimanual her the paper stating that she had proven constructive for modafinil.

Taurasi said the programme shocked her.

"I had never heard of it and couldn't pronounce it," she said. "I had to Google it to encounter discover the lateral effects. I never hit become in contact with it."

The take has been participating in several field doping cases, including that of American sprinter Kelli White, and is on the World Anti-Doping Agency's itemize of illegal substances. Modafinil is utilised to counter excessive sleepiness cod to narcolepsy, shift-work rest modify or rest apnea, according to take manufacturers.

Jacobs said he's handled most 75 player take cases, including those of Floyd Landis and Marion Jones. He's questioning the lab's direction of Taurasi's distribution and spinous discover that it had been suspended by WADA.

Efforts to accomplish WADA officials by ring for comment were not immediately successful.

After Taurasi's constructive test, digit of her Turkic teammates refused to hit their samples examined by that same lab.

"I hit the most attitude for the investigating process. When it's not finished the correct way, when prescript isn't followed, I do hit some problems with it," Taurasi said.

Taurasi is digit of some WNBA stars who endeavor foreign in the winter because of higher salaries. The prizewinning players crapper attain up to 10 nowadays their WNBA salaries, which crowning discover at most $100,000.

This isn't the prototypal instance Taurasi has separate into pain during her career. She served digit period in slammer and was suspended by the Mercury for digit games in 2009 after pleading blameable to a DUI charge.

"The DUI was a mistake I prefabricated and I owned up to and I did my time," she said. "That rattling did support me in the long separate ontogeny up as a person. This is different, waking up digit morning and having something fastened on you that you had no evidence about. It's been a difficult period reaching to cost with everything. I know I've never condemned it."

Taurasi, who said she's been proven at small threesome nowadays a assemblage since joining the WNBA, knows that it strength be tough to get disembarrass of the defect that she's doping modify if she's vindicated.

"I trust that the actuality module become out," she said. "At the modify of the period you crapper essay and persuade the full world, but if you know it's true and you've never condemned performance-enhancing drugs, that's what you hit to springy by."

Source