Betrayed by a buddy, how Olympic sprinter’s profession unravelled after shock arrest in medication crackdown

Born to addict mother and father, surrounded by heroin and crack cocaine, Leon Reid says all he ever needed was to flee medication.

Instead, the sprinter ended up feeling deceived and betrayed by a buddy, resulting in a conviction for permitting his house for use to provide crack cocaine.

It was the unravelling of an athletics profession that noticed him compete on the Olympics for Ireland.

The 28-year-old sees himself as a sufferer of naivety and breach of belief. And it is a story he hopes others – notably in sport – can study from to keep away from making the identical errors.

“I put my trust in someone and an old training partner, an old friend,” Reid tells Sky News in his first TV interview on the case. “I feel like I’ve got really taken advantage of, especially when I was at the height of my career.”

After shifting between 14 foster houses, Reid discovered stability and pace on the athletics observe.

Running put his life on a brand new observe after a disrupted childhood, with the encouragement of foster mother and father and a coach. It gave him an surprising profession.

Running for Northern Ireland, his main occasion debut got here in 2018. Bronze within the 200m was taken house from the Commonwealth Games in Australia.

By 2020 he was making ready for the Olympics, delayed by the pandemic, and altered his routine.

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Friend ‘used his flat’ to provide crack cocaine

The first lockdown prevented him from persevering with coaching in South Africa. So he was again in England, returning to a flat in Bristol that he was subletting to a buddy.

Reid maintains whereas he was out coaching, Romaine Hyman was utilizing the flat to provide crack cocaine.

The first he knew about it was when the police arrived, he insists.

In May 2020, he was arrested as a part of an operation led by the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, taking down an encrypted communications service.

“It’s obviously really upsetting,” Reid says by the seaside in Worthing. “It’s been everything I’ve tried to get away from my whole life (drugs) and getting put back into that sort of that circle, it was just nothing that I had ever dreamed that I’d ever be involved in, ever.”

Ordered to hold out neighborhood sentence

While awaiting trial, he was nonetheless in a position to go to the Olympics – after interesting in opposition to an Irish deselection choice – and made the 200m semi-finals in Tokyo in 2021.

Then got here his trial final yr and a conviction for permitting his flat for use for the manufacturing of cocaine and receiving cost, which textual content messages confirmed to be £500.

Reid was ordered to hold out neighborhood service. Hyman was jailed for 26 years after being discovered responsible of 18 offences within the crackdown on his try and construct a medication empire.

“I was there training for the Olympics. I was at the peak of my career,” Reid recalled. “I wasn’t really focused on my friend. He was doing his work-out in the apartment, which obviously he said it was forex trading and things like that, which I’ve got no interest in.”

How might Reid not discover the house was getting used to provide cocaine?

“He was making sure that I was out of the apartment,” he responded. “I was on a WADA drug list, so even if I touched a door handle that did have traces of drugs on, I would get a positive drug test and I would fail that, and I would lose my career. So I was in no position to risk that on any scale.”

‘It destroyed my profession and in addition my fame’

Reid maintains he was “too nonchalant about the whole situation” whereas doing a favour for a buddy, insisting: “I didn’t need the money.”

He had gained standing, sponsors and success. But they deserted him after the conviction.

A return to the Commonwealth Games was additionally blocked final yr when he was deemed a safety threat by Birmingham organisers.

“It destroyed my career,” he says. “And also my reputation.”

Earnings had been misplaced, debt grew. With his first baby born a month in the past, Reid realised a profession harmed by a prison conviction needed to finish.

But all through our hour collectively, he doesn’t appear offended. Not even over the betrayal.

“Controlling emotions is obviously super important in sport, and you obviously have to take that into life,” Reid says. “I can’t get angry over every little thing.

“And for the previous two years I’ve been type of like residing this nightmare. So for me to have the ability to clear the air and really get some contemporary begin, then that is extra vital than me getting offended about somebody … in jail.”

Instead, he hopes to use his misfortune to help those still in professional sport. A mentoring business is being formed, so he can leave his temporary telesales job.

“I fought my demons of the previous two years,” Reid says. “I’ve had the no sleep nights and the cry myself to sleep. But now I’m trying ahead to the long run.”