Sha'Carri Richardson Is Glad She Isn't Perfect

Sha’Carri Richardson is human. The 21-year-old sprinting star won’t get to run the 100-meter race in the Olympics after testing positive for pot, but she’s also not running away from the sport or the spotlight. After acknowledging her mistake and thanking her community for support, she tweeted “I’m sorry, I can’t be y’all Olympic Champ this year but I promise I’ll be your World Champ next year.” She followed that with another tweet—"All these perfect people that know how to live life, I’m glad I’m not one of them!” In a recent interview she said she’d used pot to cope with the pain of finding out she’d lost her mother from a reporter during an interview.

“Rules are rules,” President Joe Biden said when asked about the situation. He said that he was proud of how she’d handled the controversy, and, alluding to his position on decriminalizing cannabis, said, “Whether that should remain the rule, is a different issue,” USA Today reports. Leniency around cannabis is gaining traction in other sports, and some doctors think it can help treat athletes' pain. “There’s no evidence that cannabis is performance-enhancing,” cannabis researcher Sue Sisley said, per the Washington Post. Richardson used the cannabis in Oregon, where it’s legal. (More Olympics stories.)