The life of Canadian curler Jim Armstrong can best be described as a wild roller-coaster ride. The 61-year-old dentist had represented British Columbia at six consecutive Brier curling tournaments during the 1980s. In 2003, he suffered a car accident, which forced him to sell his dental practice and has placed him in a wheelchair ever since. In 2005, his wife was diagnosed with cancer, and she would pass away four years later. Armstrong took up wheelchair curling in 2007 and in 2010 he would skip the Canadian Paralympic curling team to a gold medal, but later in the year he and his son were charged for importing and selling counterfeit Viagra and Cialis pills.
Now his life story has taken another dramatic turn, as he has been banned by the Canadian Curling Association and World Curling Federation after failing an out-of-competition doping test in December. Armstrong plans to appeal the decision, claiming that he had unknowingly taken tamoxifen pills that his wife was using to treat her breast cancer because they got mixed in with his pills that he takes for his physical ailments.
Tamoxifen is often used by athletes to counter the side-effects of steroids (i.e. the growth of lady-like breasts), but I may actually be buying Armstrong’s story in this instance. After all, what kind of a curler thinks he needs roids to get a upper hand on the competition?
Hat Tip – [Ottawa Citizen via reader Tommy]