Tennis Star Didn’t Do Cocaine; There Was This Girl...

His story: She did the coke, he kissed her, he tested positive

By KURT HELIN

Updated 12:24 PM PDT, Thu, Jul 16, 2009

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Sometimes the ballsiet defenses are the best.

Richard Gasquet was up for a two-and-a-half year suspension after testing positive for cocaine in his system during the ATP stop in Miami.

He and his attorneys went with the Jimmy Buffett defense — some people say that there’s a woman to blame. Gasquet said he would never roll up a $100 bill and snort Peruvian powder, but there was this girl in a nightclub in Miami and they were making out and she had done cocaine so some of what she had done must have transferred to his system. The old cocaine contact high theory.

And it worked. An international tribunal of lawyers who decides such things noted that the amount of cocaine found in Gasquet’s bloodstream was so small it could not have come from recreational use (that or he’s just really, really bad at it) so this story seemed plausible. And they apparently just plain liked the guy. The tribunal reduced his suspension to essentially time served (a couple of months).

Now he can return to the court where he is regarded as a talented underachiever who can’t seem to focus and concentrate — oddly, kind of things you’d expect of a guy with this kind of lifestyle.

This ruling could lead to a rash of athlete blaming women in clubs for their problems. Manny Ramirez got female fertility drugs in his system because he was at this club in Los Angeles and there was this woman. Plaxico Burress didn’t shoot himself in the leg, there was this girl in a Manhattan nightclub. You get the idea.

But be warned, what a French tennis star and his team of lawyers can get away with and what you can get away with when trying to explain something away to your boss are two different things. Don’t try this excuse with your girlfriend.