![]() However, even the top female cyclo-cross racers don’t earn as much as an athletics champion like Lawson and, after spending $8,000 on lawyers to fight the case, Compton’s partner Mark Legg said: “We couldn’t keep throwing money at a hopeless situation”.Įven if they had been successful, there are no mechanisms to recoup the money in the case of a false positive in the anti-doping system. ![]() In 2020, long jumper Jarrion Lawson’s four-year ban was overturned after the CAS decided his Trenbolone positive was likely caused by a beef bowl from a Japanese restaurant. But other athletes have avoided sporting bans after testing positive for the drug due to eating meat from China, Mexico or Guatemala – leading WADA to revise its policies.Ĭompton is in the same boat as runner Shelby Houlihan, who missed the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for nandrolone, which she blamed on a pork burrito. In 2010, Alberto Contador argued his clenbuterol positive was the result of contaminated meat, an assertion that failed to sway the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) or the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), mainly because Spanish beef producers don’t use the substance. The meat was not organic and, in the US, the FDA allows ranchers to implant their cattle with a wide range of hormones, including testosterone, to promote growth provided the levels of the hormones are “below a safe level” when the cows are slaughtered. Also unfortunately for Compton, the news of the CIR result came five months after she’d given the sample, making it highly unlikely she could provide proof it came from a contaminated supplement or food.Ĭompton told Cyclingnews she suspected some beef she’d had for dinner the night before the doping control was to blame. ![]() Unfortunately for Compton, the test determined the source was exogenous. Because both men’s and women’s bodies make their own testosterone, USADA looked at the Carbon Isotope Ratio (CIR), which would determine if the origin of the hormone was natural or of an external (exogenous) origin. The unusual peak raised flags on Compton’s passport, leading USADA to investigate further. However, when compared across seven years of data, different values stood out: a peak of androsterone and etiocholanolone – both of which are metabolites of testosterone. In the data file shared with Cyclingnews, Compton’s testosterone/epitestosterone ratio – the one that raised red flags in Landis’ doping control – did not stand out at 1.5, which is well within the normal range. ![]() Yet USADA, months later, re-examined the sample and detected traces of the steroid hormone using the same test that cost Floyd Landis the 2006 Tour de France. The initial test showed no indication of the ultimate result: a positive for testosterone. It’s a case of an athlete who submitted regularly to the Athlete Biological Passport, who was outspoken against doping, but whose career has now ended because of the ban.Ĭompton was tested out of competition on September 16, 2020, in one of 90 controls performed between the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the UCI, or other anti-doping agencies since January 5, 2014. The news that US cyclo-cross legend Katie Compton has been banned for four years after testing positive for an anabolic steroid, prematurely truncating her storied career, was unexpected and shocking in many ways, but the case should send alarm bells across the professional peloton.
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