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It seems as more and more athletes are caught using drugs banned by their sport that they come up with more and more unique excuses as to why that drug was found in their system.

But by far the most ingenious excuse I have ever heard came from tennis player Richard Gasquet after he was found with cocaine in his system earlier this year and faced a two-year ban from the ATP Tour.

Gasquet, a Frenchman ranked 32nd in the world, was suspended in May after he pulled out of a tournament in Key Biscayne, Fla., citing a shoulder injury. A urine sample he provided at the tournament tested positive for cocaine.

But he recently told a tribunal that after deciding to withdraw from that tournament he went to a South Beach nightclub with friends. The tribunal incredibly noted that club was “notoriously associated with use of illegal recreational drugs including cocaine.”

Gasquet told the hearing held in London last month that he hooked up with a woman named ”Pamela,” whom he kissed seven times between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., and that is how the small amount of cocaine entered his system. The tribunal said it was likely she had consumed cocaine during the night, though it had no direct evidence.

Although Gasquet, 23, was at fault for exposing himself to contamination at a nightclub, “that fault was not significant,” the three-lawyer panel ruled.

In light of those circumstances, the panel barred him for 2 months 15 days, ending Thursday, rather than banishing him for two years, which it said would have been “unjust and disproportionate.”

“We conclude … more likely than not that the cocaine detected in the player’s urine sample entered by means of Pamela’s kissing in the period between from about 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. that morning. If the cocaine had been ingested earlier, the quantity was so small and the half-life of the drug is so short, it would have been undetectable in the player’s urine,” the panel said.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

Gasquet, a Wimbledon semifinalist in 2007, plans to return to the tour in Montreal on Aug. 10.

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