Mother Of Disqualified Olympian Is Right: Pot Is Not An Enhancer

There’s a scene in the great film Black Sheep where law enforcement officers played by Chris Farley and David Spade accidentally ingest some nitrous oxide that has leaked into their car. They’re flying high and get pulled over by a cop. Here’s the dialogue:

Motorcycle Cop: Tell me, officer, do you have any idea how fast you were going?

Mike: Well, I got a 426 hemi here, 3/4 cams, nitro boosters, I can get ‘er up to as good as 155! Never do, though, of course, unless I’m chasing a cute chick in a Ferrari! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I guess I was goin’ about… 65, tops.

Motorcycle Cop: SEVEN! SEVEN miles an hour! And normally, when I stop people, they pull onto the *shoulder*!

That’s how I feel about the news that a 23-year-old judo Olympian from New Jersey got DQed for accidentally ingesting pot. His mother talked to WNYC:

The mother of Nick Delpopolo, who grew up in Westfield, N.J., said her son called her crying on Sunday. He told officials he unintentionally ate something baked with marijuana before the Olympics.

”Whatever it is it was not an enhancement,” said his mother, Joyce Delpopolo, a history teacher, ”so it would not have improved his performance.”

Exactly! It’s insane that pot is illegal anyway. But that a judo fighter ingests it is his problem, not the Olympic committee’s. I mean, who in their right mind would take pot to enhance performance?

And it sounds like the Delpopolos are having to deal with this at the worst time. Both Nick and his sister were adopted from the former Yugoslavia and the mom found out about the test while trying to learn more about the biological parents of their daughter Helen, also a judo star.

For his part, Nick Delpopolo says he’s sorry and embarrassed and that he didn’t know he was ingesting the ganja:

”After making frantic phone calls to friends and family following the results, a family member confessed that the brownies she had baked (and that I had eaten a few weeks prior) contained marijuana. I had no idea that I had ingested marijuana until that moment,” the statement read. The family member sent a “confession letter” to the Olympic Committee.

“Although my actions were not deliberate, I know that I let down the entire nation, and for that I am truly sorry,” Delpopolo said.

He’s apparently the first Olympian this year to fail an in-competition doping test. His teachers and acquaintances all say that it sounds out of character for the guy.

Again, either way, it seems silly that a pot brownie would disqualify you if you can, say, drink a glass of wine before competing.

(Photo: NickDelpopolo.com)

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