PARIS : When she was in a Russian penal colony, Brittney Griner was not sure she would ever play basketball again, let alone play in her third Olympic gold-medal game at the Paris Games.
The 33-year-old Griner, who had played professionally in Russia in addition to playing in the WNBA, was detained in a Moscow airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage in February 2022.
She spent nearly 10 months in detention. "I didn't even know if I would play basketball, honestly," Griner said after the United States' 85-64 semi-final win against Australia at the Bercy Arena in Paris on Friday. "It was a long journey, a hard journey to get back into it.
I'm just happy that my body was able to hold up and be able to be here."Griner had a prescription in the United States for medical marijuana and pleaded guilty to charges of possessing and smuggling illegal drugs, saying she had made an honest mistake.