Over the years, sportspersons have come up with bizarre explanations to convince hearing panels that they ingested the drug unintentionally.

Recently, a canoeist was given a clean chit after failing a dope test as she could prove that exchange of body fluids during sex was the reason for contamination. Over the years, sportspersons have come up with bizarre explanations to convince hearing panels that they ingested the drug unintentionally.

Getting lucky

Laurence Vincent-Lapointe, the 11-time world champion canoeist, was cleared to compete after an anti-doping panel accepted that traces of Ligandrol detected in her samples was because of sex with her boyfriend. The Canadian had failed a dope test just before last year’s canoe sprint World Championships. The 25-year-old got off the hook because Ligandrol,was found in supplements her former lover was using. Ligandrol is known to increase muscle growth. The International Canoeing Federation accepted evidence provided after her ex-boyfriend’s hair was tested.

PS: American sprinter Dennis Mitchell tried to connect his high levels of testosterone to having sex four times a day with his wife. The US track and field body believed him but the World Athletics didn’t buy the theory.

High tea

Peru football captain Paolo Guerrero tested positive for cocaine after a 2018 World Cup qualifier. His argument was that it was a result of drinking coca tea, native to South America, at the visitors’ room of the hotel. There was logic in his argument because the leaf of the coca plant is used to derive cocaine, classified as a stimulant under anti-doping rules. A Swiss Supreme Court allowed him to play the World Cup by lifting the 14-month ban temporarily. The Court of Arbitration for Sport didn’t buy Guerrero’s story.

PS: Recreational drugs like cocaine and cannabis are not known to have performance enhancing benefits. The World Anti-Doping Agency may reduce the ban period to just three months from 2021 – down from anywhere between 12 months and four years.

Blame the pigeons

Cycling is a sport notorious for doping but this excuse took the cake. In 1983, Dutch cyclist Adri van der Poel tested positive for Strychnine, listed as a banned stimulant. Strychnine is found in rat poison but when taken in micro doses it can help delay the onset of leg cramps. Van der Poel came up with an amusing reason for his positive test — consuming pigeon pie. His father-in-law, a race pigeon aficionado, baked the pie using one of the pigeons. Van der Poel, argued that this particular pigeon had been doped. He returned to compete when his ban ended.

PS: Petr Korda, the 1998 Australia Open winner tested positive for nandrolone and blamed it on eating veal. He would have had to eat 40 animals (pumped with steriods for fattening) a day to to reach the levels in his body, experts concluded.

Where there is a willy

American LaShawn Merritt, the 2008 Olympics 400m champion, failed three separate drug tests between 2009 and 2010. Merritt admitted to using a penis enhancement product which contained the banned substance dehydroepiandrosterone, a banned steroid. Merritt pleaded that he used the product during a time when he wasn’t competing or training. “I hope my sponsors, family, friends and the sport itself will forgive me for making such a foolish, immature and egotistical mistake,” he later said. “Any penalty that I may receive for my action will not overshadow the embarrassment and humiliation that I feel inside.” He was banned for two years. He returned to competition and won the gold at the 2015 World Championships and bronze at the Rio Olympics a year later.

Oh Deer

Musk deer glands used in Chinese medicine to treat players who were struck by lightning was the reason North Korean officials gave when five members of the women’s football team tested positive for banned steroids at the 2011 Fifa World Cup. The use of a animal part, in this case a gland which can be cut open and the extract used to make medicine, had anti-doping experts concerned about the rise of naturally-occurring substances used by sportspeople. Fifa banned the five players for 18 months and kicked out North Korea from the next World Cup.

PS: At the 2010 men’s World Cup, experts were concerned about stimulants derived from African medicines. They were not banned but studies showed they could give an unfair advantage and were undetectable.

Kiss and tell

French tennis player Richard Gasquet kissed a girl at a nightclub where he had gone to watch a dance music festival after withdrawing from a tournament in Key Biscayne. The girl, according to Gasquet was perhaps a cocaine user. Gasquet had tested positive for cocaine in 2009. He escaped a lengthy ban because of two key factors — the amount of cocaine was so little in his body that if a test of conducted a few hours later he would have been ‘negative’; that the music festival was known to be a hub for recreational drugs also went in Gasquet’s favour. The International Tennis Federation had pushed from a two-year ban but was instructed to impose a retroactive ban of just over two months.

Twin trouble

When cyclist Tyler Hamilton was caught for blood doping his defence team came up with a novel explanation. He blamed a ‘disappearing twin’ in his mother’s womb, or because of what is called chimerism – person has two sets of DNA – a rare condition that can happen during fetal development when two separate eggs and sperms merge. Those defending the American put forward this theory to explain why the cyclist had two types of blood in his body. Hamilton received a two year suspension in 2004. Six years later, he was called by a testify in the probe against Lance Armstrong. He admitted he had indulged in doping and a year later also implicated Armstrong.

A CIA plot

High jump great Javier Sotomayor tested positive for cocaine at the 1999 Pan-American Games. In Cuba, there was outrage and Granma, the official newspaper of the central committee of the Cuban Communist party, floated a conspiracy theory in which Sotomayor was the victim of a plot of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency. Fidel Castro used his influence to ensure Sotomayor’s two-year ban was reduced by half, which allowed him to participated in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He won a silver to go with the gold he had won at Barcelona in 1992.

PS: A year after the Sydney Olympics, Sotomayor — who still holds the world record of 2.45 metres — tested positive for anabolic steroid nandrolone and immediately announced his retirement.