The North American athlete Gil Roberts, a gold medalist in the 4 x 400 meter relay event in Rio 2016, was suspended for 16 months by the United States Anti-Doping Agency after testing positive for andarine and ostarine in a urine sample collected on May 19 of this year.
The 33-year-old sprinter, who in his defense alleged the consumption of a dietary supplement that did not detail the substances in the ingredients on his label and consequently achieved a reduction in the sanction, will be able to return to the competition in October 2023 since the provisional penalty had already been in effect since June 3.
With regard to prohibited substances, both andarin and ostarine are included in the category of “selective androgen receptor modulators” (SARMs), whose main effects are the increase in muscle and bone mass, as well as the reduction of overweight without inhibiting natural testosterone production, as opposed to what happens with traditional anabolics.
This is not the first time Roberts has tested positive. In 2017, the winner of the 4 x 400 meters of the 2012 World Indoor Championship was detected by probenecid, a diuretic and masking agent, but he managed to be excused by successfully alleging that he had ingested the prohibited substance when kissing his girlfriend, a case with many points of contact with that of French tennis player Richard Gasquet, who in 2009 obtained acquittal after testing positive for cocaine by justifying that the same It had been transmitted to him by a young woman through a kiss at a party in the state of Florida, in the United States.
The case of Roberts, absent from Tokyo 2020, occurred in the same week that the reanalysis of the London 2012 samples ended, with the detection of 73 new positives and 31 athletes who were forced to return their medals.