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When she was disqualified from the Tokyo Olympics, Sha’Carri Richardson immediately did an interview on the TODAY show. Now, she’s revealing that she regrets doing the televised interview so soon.

“I wish I never did this,” she wrote on Twitter about the chat with anchor Savannah Guthrie. “I wish I had the choice when it was time for me to tell my story.”

After testing positive for marijuana use, Sha’Carri Richardson was banned from participating in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. She tested positive in Oregon, where marijuana use is legal. However, its use among athletes is prohibited by the the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and USA Track and Field. During the TODAY interview, the Dallas native shared that she smoked marijuana while coping with the sudden death of her mother weeks prior.

(I’m) not making an excuse or looking for any empathy in my case, but, however, being in that position in my life, finding out something like that, something that I would say is probably one of the biggest things that have impacted me … that definitely was a very heavy topic on me.

People don’t understand what it’s like to have to … go in front of the world and put on a face and hide my pain. Who am I to tell you how to cope when you’re dealing with the pain or you’re dealing with a struggle that you haven’t experienced before or that you thought you never would have to deal with?

While she was unable to participate in the Olympics, another athlete was able to after failing a drug test. Black Twitter raised hell when Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was able to participate in the Beijing 2022 Olympics after failing a doping test. Richardson made sure she spoke out about the unfair treatment as well.

“Can we get a solid answer on the difference of her situation and mines?,” she tweeted. “My mother died and I can’t run and was also favored to place top 3. The only difference I see is I’m a black young lady.”

Richardson hopes to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

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