A Spring Valley sprinter who won two medals at the 2012 London Paralympic Games has accepted a one-year suspension after testing positive for evidence of cocaine at a national meet last June, authorities said Monday.
Blake Leeper, who was born without his lower legs, is only the fifth paralympic track athlete to be banned from competition by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, or USADA.
Leeper, 26, tested positive for benzoylecgonine from a sample collected June 21, 2015, at the U.S. Paralympic Track & Field National Championships in St. Paul, Minn., USADA said.
“Benzoylecgonine is a metabolite of cocaine, a substance in the class of stimulants prohibited under the USADA Protocol for Olympic and Paralympic Movement Testing and the International Paralympic Committee Anti-Doping Code,” USADA said in a statement.
But USADA said Leeper’s use of cocaine was not intended to enhance performance, “and in consideration of other mitigating factors, he was deemed eligible for a reduced, one-year sanction.”
Leeper won’t be able to compete until June, but his suspension ends before the qualifying 2016 Paralympic Games trials meet starting June 30 in Charlotte, North Carolina. A draft of the selection procedures for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games in September, following the Olympic Games, indicates athletes can be removed from the team for a doping violation. But it was unclear how it would affect Leeper if his ban has ended.
At the London Games, Leeper was second to Oscar “Blade Runner” Pistorius of South Africa in the 400-meter dash, where Pistorius ran 46.68 and Leeper 50.14. In the 200-meter dash, Leeper won bronze in 22.46 — behind Pistorius and gold medalist Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira of Brazil in 21.45 seconds.
In 2013, The San Diego Union-Tribune told of Leeper’s dismay at Pistorius being charged in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
“He’s like the Jackie Robinson of our sport, the trailblazer,” Leeper told the U-T. “He’s been my hero; then one day I’m running the 100-meter finals in (the 2011 IPC Worlds in) New Zealand, right beside him. He understood that I wasn’t there yet, but he took the time to mentor me.”
“That’s something I would never associate with him,” Leeper said from the U.S. Olympic training center in Chula Vista. “He was a very mellow, humble dude. Extremely, extremely calm.”
Before Leeper, the last paralympic track athlete to be suspended was thrower Camdin Crouse in 2013. He tested positive for amphetamine and methylhexaneamine and received a two-year ban from competition.
Updated at 8:35 a.m. Feb. 2, 2016
