Former Team Einarson lead Briane Harris weighs in on lost season

Team Canada lead Briane Harris, left, and third Val Sweeting sweep while playing Prince Edward Island at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Kamloops, B.C., on Monday, February 20, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

When Briane Harris received an unexpected email from World Curling in February 2024, she thought it looked quite unusual and didn’t open it right away.

Thinking it was probably spam, she instead joined her teammates — the four-time national champions skipped by Kerri Einarson — at a Calgary Flames game on the eve of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

Another email from the federation arrived the next morning. This one looked a little different.

“It just looked more legit the second time and I knew they would email me again if it was serious,” Harris said. “So I was like, ‘OK I’ll open it.’ And then at that time, like everything changed and I was like, ‘Holy crap.‘”

Harris was informed an out-of-competition urine sample tested positive for trace amounts of Ligandrol. It’s banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for its anabolic, muscle-building effects.

“I had not seen that coming in a million years because obviously I wasn’t doping,” she said.

Harris was placed under provisional suspension, setting in motion a nearly yearlong journey that saw her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which eventually found she bore “no fault or negligence” for the violation.

Her ban was lifted last January. Shortly thereafter, her seven-year run with the Einarson team came to an end and she would join Team Kate Cameron at third.

“I just feel like a weight has been lifted off me and I am so excited for the future,” Harris said in an interview.

Harris would claim she was unknowingly exposed to Ligandrol through intimate contact with her husband. But shortly after getting news of the positive test, she was stumped as to how it got in her system.

“When I got back to the hotel room, my husband said that the name (Ligandrol) sounded really familiar and so he started looking it up on his phone,” Harris recalled. “And he was like, ‘Oh my God, I think you got it through me somehow.’

“He was like, ‘I didn’t even know what this stuff was.’ He was just taking a supplement you can buy.”

According to the court decision, Harris’s husband had been using a supplement known as the “CrossFit Stack” from November 2023 until January 2024, which he kept in his gym bag and didn’t use at home.

Harris argued she didn’t know or suspect that her husband had been consuming Ligandrol, or that intimate contact represented a risk of contamination with prohibited substances.

She referred to the case of Laurence Vincent-Lapointe, who was suspended in 2019 after a similar situation.

The Canadian canoeist, who was able to connect with Harris, was cleared after persuading a tribunal that a positive test for Ligandrol was caused by bodily fluid contamination from her then-boyfriend.

“It was great to hear her side of things, how it went for her and what she suggested I get done to prove my innocence,” Harris said from Petersfield, Man.

In the whirlwind of those first few days in Calgary, Harris was told that while under suspension she couldn’t see her teammates or practise on the ice. She hired legal representation and tackled an off-ice process she never saw coming.

After a hearing in August, it took nearly five months for CAS to release its decision.

“We got the best result,” Harris said. “The one that we wanted with zero fault and zero negligence.”

Through the fall, Harris trained regularly in her home gym, desperately wanting to return to the ice and resume playing with her team.

“I would be crying (while) working out just because it was just so mentally hard to work toward something, (to) try to be ready to play when you don’t know what the verdict is going to be,” she said.

“‘(Am I) doing it for nothing?’ That would always cross my mind.”

Five months pregnant when her suspension was lifted, Harris had set a goal to be ready to play “at any moment.”

When she got the good news, she advised her teammates with a message in a group chat. The team was playing at a Grand Slam in Guelph, Ont., at the time and offered congratulations, Harris said.

Alternate Krysten Karwacki filled in during Harris’s absence and newcomer Karlee Burgess was playing second for the injured Shannon Birchard.

“I totally wanted to return to the team,” Harris said. “That’s what I wanted to do. I knew I was ready and I knew I was able.”

The team said it planned to figure out next steps after the bonspiel. Later that month, citing the need for lineup consistency, the Einarson rink decided the current foursome would continue on.

In addition, Lauren Lenentine was added as an alternate for the 2025 Scotties. Even though Harris wasn’t in the lineup, she was still “very much a part” of Team Einarson, coach Reid Carruthers said at the time.

“When I got cleared, I asked that we have a team discussion to figure out what we wanted to do as a team for the Scotties,” Harris said. “And they said that they were going to do that with me, but then that didn’t really happen.

“When I thought the meeting was happening to talk about it, (it) was actually them just telling me that I wasn’t going to be on the team with them for the Scotties.”

Her tenure formally ended last week via a team social media post. Harris’s addition to Cameron’s foursome was announced the same day.

Three members of Team Einarson declined interview requests to discuss the change.

“I grew as a player and I’m really grateful for all of that, the experience and everything that I got to take from it,” Harris said of her time with the team. “And now I get to take all that and apply it to Team Cameron.

“Hopefully I can be a good addition to their team and take us to that next level.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 31, 2025.

Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press