Judo star Tong not the first to tell drugs test porkies

THERE have been some great excuses over the years for a failed drugs test.

TELLING PORKIES: Chinese judoka Tong Wen - the Olympic and world champion - blamed an infected pork chop on her failed drugs test (Getty Images)

Sprinter Dennis Mitchell claimed his positive result for high levels of testosterone was due to his exploits in the bedroom Olympics - preparing for races by drinking beer and having sex five times a night.

Ross Rebagliati insisted the presence of marijuana was because he attended too many parties where cannabis was smoked....then again he was a snowboarder.

Floyd Landis blamed the consumption of whiskey for his doping test failure during the 2006 Tour de France while former world and Olympic sprint hurdles champion, Ludmila Engquist, just blamed her ex-husband.

South American long jumper Maurren Maggi, the reigning Olympic champion, pleaded her hair removal cream contained a hidden performance enhancer - bringing whole new meaning to a Brazilian. 

And German distance runner Dieter Baumann - one of many to claim he had been ‘spiked' - blamed a rival for injecting his toothpaste with nandrolone while Linford Christie escaped a ban during the 1988 Olympics, after insisting a positive ephedrine doping sample had been caused by too many cups of Lapsang Souchong and ginseng tea.

So Tong Wen's insistence that she failed a drugs test because of a pork chop is perhaps not so strange after all.

Tong, who won the 78kg title at the Beijing Olympics, has been banned for two years and stripped of her world title after a positive test for banned substance Clenbuterol.

In a sub-plot she beat Great Britain's Karina Bryant in the world final, although judo's world governing body have decided not to upgrade the 32-year old Surrey judoka.

"She trained in Europe and was sick of the food, so we gave her a lot of pork chops when she came home," said her coach Wu Weifeng.

Clenbuterol's main use is to fatten up livestock but sports cheats also use it to build up muscle.

But Wu is not the first to rely on telling porkies to escape punishment.

Spanish discus thrower David Martinez tried a similar defence - claiming a positive nandrolone test was also down to him consuming infected pork.

Martinez, an Olympic finalist in 1992, refused to back down after authorities raised their disbelieving eyebrows at his convoluted claim.

In an desperate attempt to prove his point he kept a pig in his back garden, regularly injecting the helpless hog with a cocktail drugs for four months.

He then slaughtered the creature and ate it - promptly demanding he was retested.

But even those lengths couldn't save his bacon - the retest was negative.

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