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Olympic stoner Nick Delpopolo.

Another blonde? What can I say? Other than today’s Olympic stud gets the gold medal not just for being a hottie, but for being a pottie too. On Monday, judoka Nick Delpopolo was expelled from the London Olympic Games after testing positive for marijuana. Shortly after finishing seventh in the 73kg judo quarter-finals Delpopolo was asked to pee in a cup to check for any form of doping. He tested positive for the kind of doping that isn’t usually considered to enhance your performance – marijuana.

“My positive test was caused by my inadvertent consumption of food that I did not realize had been baked with marijuana, before I left for the Olympic Games,” said Delpopolo in his official statement, apologizing to the U.S. Olympic Committee, his teammates, and fans. The 23-year-old New Jersey boy waived the right for his case to be heard before the Disciplinary Commission, and the USOC said it fully supported his expulsion.

Banned substances are on the list if they meet specific criteria: it is proven to be performance enhancing, it goes against the spirit of sport, or it is dangerous to the health of athletes. Marijuana qualifies as a forbidden drug under the current rules, with athletes facing a two-year ban if it is found in their system. Those responsible for maintaining the list are currently considering removing it from the list of banned substances, but too late to allow for Delpopolo’s high.

Delpopolo, first in 10,500 US Olympians to fail an in-competition drug test, and better at his sport than in coming up with plausible reasons for being stoned, was expected to place well in the judo competition, possibly even to medal. He took the Judo world by storm in 2010, moving up an amazing 83 spots to be ranked #16 in the world after taking the Gold at the US Open, Venezuela World Cup, and El Salvador World Cup; silver at the Samoa World Cup and USA Judo Senior National Championships; and a bronze at the USA World Cup and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. He was the top medal winner in his division and was ranked #1 in the US. And during the early days of the Games Nick received a lot of press due to his life story.

Born Petra Perovic, Delpopolo spent the first years of his life in small orphanage in Niksic, Montenegro and like most children at the orphanage, surrounded by a country torn apart by war, Nick’s future was very uncertain. At the age of two though, he was adopted by Dominic and Joyce Delpopolo of the US, who wanted to adopt a young child and were unable to do so in America because of their age (Dominic was in his mid-fifties and Joyce in her forties). Dominic’s family was from Serbia, so they decided to start the adoption process there. Three years after being brought home to America, Nick began his career in judo and then at age eight also began wrestling.

Winning both State and National championships, for a time it looked like wrestling would be Nick’s sport. But his heart was set on the world of judo and during his middle school years his parents sent him to New York to train and live with Olympic Silver Medalist Jason Morris. He returned home for high school, and returned to wrestling, hoping to land college scholarships (there were none offered for judo). Using the moves he’d learned in judo, Nick dominated his weight class and was touted as one of their most promising up-and-coming wrestlers. By his sophomore year, Nick began receiving “letters of interest” from school’s with top wrestling programs. But then during the end of his sophomore wrestling season Delpopolo suffered a career altering injury, he caught his foot in-between two wrestling mats during practice and tore almost every ligament in his knee. The resulting major reconstructive surgery put an end to his wrestling career.

With sports no longer part of his daily life, Nick began making poor choices and began to get a reputation for being a ‘bad boy’ in high school. He was caught smoking cigarettes and began hanging out with a bad crowd. His parents decided to send him back to Morris and back to judo. Determined to resurrect his judo career he quickly became a dominating force and finished his Junior Judo career with 22 National titles.

At just 19 years old, Delpopolo qualified for the 2008 Olympic Trials, the youngest competitor in the division. Nick advanced to the Semi-Finals and lost a controversial match to Ryan Reser, who went on to represent the U.S. at the Beijing Games.

In 2009 he cinched the #1 spot in the US, briefly lost it to Michael Eldred, and then regained the title after winning his first World Cup. He went on to defend his #1 ranking three times in 2010, including his appearance at the World Championships in Tokyo where he finished ninth out of 83 competitors, the highest placing an American male has made since 1999.

Ranked at the 16th spot internationally, Nick moved back to New York to once again train with Morris. A month later he became the first American man ever to win the Liverpool World Cup. He followed that win with a match in Miami – an Olympic Trials event – with his long time rival Michael Eldred, whose ranking required the two athletes to fight off for the Olympic spot. Delpopolo won the trials in an epic battle and credits Jason Morris for turning his career around. As for who he credits his recipe for the magic brownies, Nick is keeping mum.

I’ve never paid that much attention to judo as an Olympic sport before, but those Olympians seem to be a bunch of colorful party people. Nicky out stoners the swimmers while Edith Bosch, a Dutchwoman with a black belt in judo who won a bronze medal at the Games got some press herself for her own version of partying. On Sunday, during an electrically-charged silence while the audience at the Olympic Stadium collectively held its breath in preparation for Usain Bolt’s inaugural dash at the London Games, a spectator – who may possibly have had one toke too many himself – lobbed a bottle onto the field toward the sprinter. Unfortunately he was seated next to Bosch who slapped him upside the head and then held him for arrest by the Metropolitan Police.

A bad ending for the unruly spectator and for Delpopolo. Nick may have just seen his London Games experience go up in smoke, but now he has the rest of the week to party his ass off. Anyone seen Michael Phelps lately?

This is Nick’s body on drugs . . .

[‘The XXX Games’ are a series of posts about hot Olympians, gay competitors – both present and past – and general articles about the 2012 London Olympics of interest to gay men. So, yeah, lots of hot male eye candy. Click the XXX Games graphic below for additional news, stories, and pictures.]

XXX Games of the Olympiad