I'm sorry if I disappointed people. I made a terrible mistake." So said double-Olympian Liza Hunter-Galvan, after the Sports Tribunal banned her for two years for doping.
The United States-based marathon runner took the blood-boosting, endurance-enhancing drug erythropoietin (EPO) and so became only the second New Zealand representative in recent times caught deliberately cheating (after Russian-born pole vaulter Denis Petouchinski, was caught on the steroid stanozolol at the 1998 Commonwealth Games).
A statement released by Hunter-Galvan's lawyer, Howard Jacobs, said she did not want to "take the path chosen by many athletes faced with a positive test and deny that she had taken EPO".
That's fine, but it should be noted that her admission came only after she had exhausted opportunities to escape on a technicality.
She hired Jacobs, the attorney who worked unsuccessfully to clear Floyd Landis, the first winner of the Tour de France to be stripped of his yellow jersey for doping.
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