A 30-minute tryst with a woman he found on Craigslist led to a positive test for cocaine and nearly cost Shawn Barber the chance to compete at the Rio Olympics.

He didn’t know whether he’d be suspended for doping until two days before his Olympic competition, and that may go some way to explaining why the pole vault world champion and gold medal hopeful jumped so poorly, finishing 10th.

Barber was allowed to compete in Rio because a sport court hearing determined that he inadvertently ingested the banned substance while kissing the woman he met online in Edmonton, the night before he competed at the Canadian Olympic trials.

The Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada decision was released Thursday at the end of the appeal period, and revealed what has been a trying personal episode for the 22-year-old.

“It was quite an ordeal going into the Olympics, but everything worked out the way it was supposed to and I’m very happy,” Barber said in a conference call from Akron, Ohio where he lives and trains.

On July 8, the day before his competition — which would secure his spot for Rio — he posted an ad in the “casual encounter” section of Craigslist. He used a pseudonym and was specific about wanting to meet a “professional” woman who was drug-free and disease-free.

He was looking for a “sexual encounter” as “a way to relieve stress,” he testified at his August hearing.

A man, referred to as M, sent him a picture of a woman, describing her as a mother of two. Barber said he thought a mother would be “more cautious, reserved” and arranged to meet them in a hotel near where he was staying with other Olympic team hopefuls in Edmonton.

What Barber didn’t know, couldn’t know, the hearing determined, was that the woman had snorted cocaine several hours before and again in the hotel bathroom just before Barber entered the room.

They spoke for about five minutes before they started kissing and during their 30-minute sexual encounter, the man M, who she said was her boyfriend at the time, remained in and around the room.

The next day, Barber competed in pole vault and, as expected, won easily and set a new championship record. Even on his worst day, Barber jumps far higher than any other Canadian so he knew, without a doubt, that he’d be tested after his event.

When he was notified two weeks later that his test came back positive for trace amounts of cocaine, he was shocked, said he had no idea how it got into his system but knew it would jeopardize his dream of competing in Rio.

The Canadian Centre of Ethics in Sport, which operates national anti-doping programs, initially proposed a four-year ban for Barber since cocaine is a banned substance under the World Anti-Doping Code.

But, at his August 5th hearing — the day of the opening ceremony in Rio — his lawyer Paul Greene made the case successfully that Barber bore no fault and had actually been diligent in trying to protect himself.

Barber asked for someone who was drug free, rejected “a couple of untrustworthy replies to his posting,” never saw the woman take any cocaine, refused a drink she offered him because he couldn’t be sure what was in it and had no idea that kissing someone could even pose a danger to passing a drug test, the judgment says.

“It was proved scientifically that it was impossible to have taken this amount of cocaine intentionally,” Greene said Thursday, referring to the traces found in Barber’s A and B samples. “It was a complete freak episode. This has happened once in history, the Gasquet case and now this is Gasquet II, where you have inadvertent ingestion of cocaine that is passed to an athlete by way of kissing.”

In 2009, French tennis player Richard Gasquet received a much-reduced two and a half month ban after the hearing panel accepted his claim that the substance got into his body through kissing a woman a Miami nightclub the day before his test.

Canadian Paralympian Jeff Adams had a somewhat similar case where he tested positive for cocaine in 2006 after a nightclub incident where a woman shoved her fingers, covered in a white powder, into his mouth. He was initially given a two-year suspension but that was overturned by a higher court which said he bore no fault and was the victim of an assault.

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In Barber’s case, it wasn’t until August 11 — just two days before his Olympic pole vault competition began — that arbitrator Ross Dumoulin rendered his decision clearing him of any wrongdoing.

He received no suspension but, according to the rules of the World Anti-Doping Code, he was still stripped of his 2016 Canadian pole vault title for having a banned substance in his body during competition, no matter how it got there.

“We’re thankful that the proper procedures picked up the substance but also ensuring that due process to Shawn was allowed in coming to a fair and reasonable decision,” Athletics Canada chief executive Rob Guy said.

Barber’s international breakthrough came at the world juniors in 2012 and since then, he has raised the Canadian pole vault record so many times that he stopped counting. In 2015, he soared to greater athletic heights winning the world title and turning professional with a Nike contract.

Off the field, though, it was a tougher year. Athletics Canada, on discovering that his father and often coach George Barber had a decade-old criminal record for sexual assault of a 17-year student in New Mexico, banned him from coaching.

The hearing decision seems to paint a tawdry tale of the online world of hookups and a stressed, young athlete making a series of questionable choices. But to hear Barber tell it, it was simply another life lesson.

“Online dating, online encounters and stuff are kind of the future,” he said in Thursday’s conference call. “There is more caution I have to take now because I realize I put myself at risk just kissing a girl.”

The arbitrator ruled that Barber’s conduct, “may be viewed as risky, careless and foolish in many different ways,” but he couldn’t reasonably have thought it was risky in terms of exposing him to a prohibited substance.

“A restaurant or a club can be just as risky as a hotel room in terms of meeting and interacting with someone who may ingest, or have ingested, cocaine,” Dumoulin wrote in his judgment.

Still, he concluded, with these words:

“This panel strongly recommends that athletes avoid engaging in the type of conduct described herein. Regardless of social trends, ‘acceptable’ is not a word many would use to characterize it . . . Canadian athletes are held to a higher standard. Fortunately for (Shawn) Barber, he has another chance to aim higher.”