On 23 February 2002, Scottish slalom skier Alain Baxter produced the race of his life at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. After standing eighth following the first run, he charged into third place in the second to win what would have been Britain’s first Olympic medal in an alpine-skiing event. Baxter had even dyed his hair in the pattern of the Scottish Saltire, although British Olympic officials had ordered him to remove the political symbol. He returned to Scotland to a hero’s welcome, complete with an open-top-bus parade, but on 1 March he was told that his post-race urine sample had tested positive for methamphetamine. The International Olympic Committee disqualified him and ordered the bronze medal returned; Austrian skier Benjamin Raich ultimately received it in December 2002.
The case became one of the most controversial inadvertent-doping disputes in Olympic history. More sophisticated testing identified the substance as levomethamphetamine, the largely non-stimulant levorotary isomer found in a United States version of a Vicks nasal inhaler that Baxter had used while competing there. Baxter maintained that he had never knowingly taken a performance-enhancing drug, and both the IOC and the Court of Arbitration for Sport accepted that he had not intended to gain an advantage. The International Ski Federation initially imposed a three-month ban, but the CAS overturned that sanction after an appeal in September 2002, allowing Baxter to compete again. His separate appeal for restoration of the medal failed in October: under the Olympic strict-liability principle, the athlete is responsible for substances found in the body even when contamination is accidental and the product has negligible performance-enhancing effects. The ruling provoked anger from Baxter’s legal and medical team, particularly because American anti-doping practices had sometimes cleared athletes who tested positive for stimulants traced to ordinary cold medicines. Baxter’s medal was never reinstated, leaving him officially fourth despite the judgment’s recognition that he was a sincere athlete who had not deliberately doped.
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