The moral to this story is that it is perfectly OK to passionately kiss your mate, even if he or she has a sinus infection.

First, meet the characters: Gil Roberts is a world-class sprinter from Oklahoma who won a gold medal for the United States in a relay at the 2016 Summer Olympics. His girlfriend, Alex Salazar, was sick last spring.

When Roberts failed a drug test, he mounted one of the more novel defenses in the history of sports doping. He said that he had kissed Salazar passionately, and that her sinus medication had entered his body.

On Thursday, an appeals court sided with the passionate kissing defense. Roberts was exonerated.

“There could have been tongue kissing, but it was more that she kissed me so soon after taking the medicine,” Roberts said Thursday, expressing relief that he had evaded a ban of up to four years for trace amounts of probenecid, a masking agent prohibited by sports regulators for its ability to disguise other drugs.

Three arbitrators wrote that it was more likely than not “that the presence of probenecid in the athlete’s system resulted from kissing his girlfriend.” A different decision could have jeopardized Roberts’ Nike sponsorship or his eligibility for the 2020 Olympics.

— The New York Times