Perhaps there is a sound reason why athletes who test positive for marijuana are not allowed to compete in the Olympics. It’s not a performance enhancing drug. If anything, it would seem to be counterproductive to athletic competition. It could be argued that it relieves pain, but so do other drugs that aren’t banned. It’s likely just that pot has been illegal and so found its way on the list of banned substances. More along the lines of “Olympic athletes don’t use illegal drugs,” even if it really isn’t germane to their being athletes or winning.

Now that it’s legal to use, at least in some places, it might be time to revisit whether it should remain a banned substance. But until the rules change, marijuana remains a banned substance, and there is no Olympic-level competitor who does not know what the rules under which they compete are, and what violation of those rules means. So complain about how dumb the rule is all you want, and it is, but there is nothing unfair, and certainly nothing racist, about the rules being enforced.

Sha’Carri Richardson, the 21-year-old American sprinter whose breakout victory in the 100-meter dash at the U.S. track and field Olympic trials in Oregon last month transformed her into an overnight star, posted a plaintive message on Twitter on Thursday afternoon: “I am human.”

I feel terrible for Richardson. I can well appreciate the effort she’s put into training, the sacrifices she made to become the best. I feel the pain of her glorious triumph as an Olympian lost. I can also feel the pain she felt at the loss of her mother. To err is human, and she erred. I cannot condemn her for taking comfort in some weed.

But she knew, after all that training, all that sacrifice, even enduring the death of her mother, what the rules were.

Sometimes it seems that way. The best athletes in the world are already under extraordinary pressure to perform — but we require extraordinary conduct from them in parts of their lives that have nothing to do with their sports.

Yes, there are extraordinary expectations of people who seek to accomplish extraordinary things. That’s why they get gold medals. That’s why they get their faces on a box of Wheaties. That’s why children put their posters on the wall of their bedrooms, motivating them to work harder so they may someday be extraordinary too.

We don’t just expect our Olympians to be incredible athletes. We expect them to be role models and to adhere to impossibly high levels of self-discipline, work ethics, and sportsmanship that have nothing to do with their actual job. Women, especially women of color, face even higher expectations.

Are women, “especially women of color,” less capable of controlling themselves than other Olympic athletes? Is this to suggest that women, “especially women of color,” find smoking weed so irresistible that expecting them to adhere to the rules, to not get high, is too much to ask of them?

Gwen Berry, a track and field Olympian who is facing criticism from conservative lawmakers for turning away from the American flag on the medal podium during the national anthem at the Olympic Trials, told me Ms. Richardson was being held to an impossible standard.

“When you are a young Black athlete, and when you come from hardship, the first thing you need is people to support you, and not just capitalize off you, off your potential,” Ms. Berry said. “She made a bad decision because of pain, because of trauma, and she’s a girl — she still needs help. Instead she’s being punished.”

This is where the very sad story of Richardson’s fall from grace goes down the bullshit rabbit hole. There’s nothing “impossible” about expecting an Olympic athlete not to smoke pot if they want to compete. Even if “she’s a girl,” she can manage to pull it off just as so many girls before her have miraculously done. It’s understandable that she made a bad decision because of pain. It’s just as understandable that bad decisions have consequences. We can empathize with Richardson and hope she gets help if that’s what she needs, but that doesn’t mean that she gets a pass for violating the rules.

Most importantly, she is not being punished for her pain and trauma. She isn’t being “punished” at all. She is being held to the standard she accepted when she decided to go for the gold, just as would any other athlete, regardless of race or gender.

For Black athletes, Ms. Berry said, the pressure to be “perfect” is intense. “If we aren’t, we get everything taken from us,” she said. “We have to work twice as hard in society and in athletics, we’re not respected otherwise. … We have no room for error. We have no room to grieve. We are not supported. And that’s the problem. It’s because we are not equal.”

The person who runs the fastest and crosses the finish line first wins the race, provided they comply with the rules that apply to all runners. If that’s too much of a burden to be “perfect,” then you have no business in the Olympics. There is nothing more equal than athletics, where no one’s skin color or ancestry adds or subtracts from the speed with which you finish 100 meters. Your “right” to smoke pot isn’t inequitable, even if the rule is dumb and irrelevant, unless your contention is that black people are prone to get stoned and break rules. And if that’s the point, then this is as racist as it gets.

I wish Richardson was able to compete. It’s a dumb rule. But it’s a rule that she knew about, that she violated and that would preclude competition for any runner. The only inequity would be to give her a pass on a rule that applies to everyone, dumb as that rule may be.