A day after two top Jamaican sprinters, Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, acknowledged that they had tested positive for a banned stimulant, their agent blamed the test result on a Canadian trainer working with the team.
The trainer, Christopher Xuereb, had provided Powell with a combination of about 20 supplements and injections — none of them banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency — according to an email the agent, Paul Doyle, said he received Sunday from Xuereb. The New York Times obtained the email but it could not be independently authenticated as being sent by Xuereb.
Xuereb did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Doyle said he believed Xuereb’s combination was responsible for the positive drug tests for Powell, a former world-record holder in the 100 metres, and Simpson, part of Jamaica’s gold medal 4x100M relay team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.
Some of the supplements were commonplace, like vitamin C, vitamin D and the pain reliever Aleve. But the email stated that Xuereb had also injected Powell with exotic substances like Actovegin, a drug used by Lance Armstrong’s US Postal Service cycling team that is made from calves’ blood extract and is said to enhance stamina.
“We were trying to figure out what went wrong, and it was pretty obvious to us where we needed to look,” Doyle said in a phone interview Monday.
“There are many different things he was giving them, and we still don’t know which one caused the positive test,” Doyle added. “Most of the supplements he gave were for recovery or energy during workouts.”
Oxilofrine, the banned stimulant that Powell tested positive for, was not listed in Xuereb’s email. Xuereb wrote that he had provided a smaller combination of substances to Simpson.
Doyle’s accusations came on the heels of a raid that the Italian police conducted on the hotel where Xuereb and the Jamaican sprinters were staying in the northeastern city of Lignano Sabbiadoro. A police official said they seized drugs and supplements that were currently being analysed. It is unclear whether the substances were legal or not, police officials said.
Local authorities have opened an investigation into the case, but no arrests have been made. The revelations about the Jamaican sprinters came as Tyson Gay, the best US sprinter over the past decade, acknowledged that he too had tested positive for a banned substance. Gay, 30, had long presented himself as a model of clean competition who spoke out against doping.
Doyle said that the two Jamaican sprinters had read the labels of all the supplements they had taken, and that they did not believe they had taken any banned substances. World Anti-Doping Agency guidelines say that every athlete is responsible for ensuring that banned substances do not enter his or her body. The athletes were cooperating with law enforcement and anti-doping authorities, Doyle said.
Doyle acknowledged that it has become a sports cliché for athletes to claim ignorance and blame their trainers when they fail drug tests. But he pointed out that Powell and Simpson “have had hundreds of clean tests throughout the years” and only now tested positive.