RUSADA has announced yesterday the ban of Angelina Simakova for the use of furosemide. The ban is for two years and starts on June 2nd of 2022. The time of the preliminary suspension is counted towards the ban and Simakova will be eligible to compete again in September 2023, although it appears she is not training and effectively retired from gymnastics following the suspension.
Simakova was an extremely promising junior – national all-around champion in 2015. As a senior, she won the AA silver at the 2018 Russian Championships and gold at the 2019 championships. This and her steady beam routines kept her on the big international teams for a while – she was part of the gold-winning 2018 Euros team and silver-winning2018 Worlds team. However, when she placed 10th at the 2019 Euros AA final, Valentina Rodionenko claimed her career was over. She was also plagued by injuries at the worst moments – at the 2018 Worlds, shortly before the 2019 Worlds, and then at the 2021 Russian Championships, her last major competition. There, Simakova finished 8th in the all-around qualification and won gold with the Moscow team but withdrew from the all-around, bars, and beam finals due to an injury. In April 2021, she was taken off the main senior national team and was put on the junior national team which reduced her funding and meant she could not train at Round Lake year-round. She started training in Vatutinki, at the CSKA (the army club) training center in Moscow where national team reserves often train. She was then removed from the junior national team in November 2021. Her name was not included on the 2022 national team roster.
Per Valentina Rodionenko, Simakova had a positive doping test when she was training in Vatutinki:
“I can’t explain [how a banned substance appeared in her sample], same as she wasn’t able to explain it. She did not take it on purpose. She was not on the main national team at camps, she was invited to CSKA in Vatutinki and it happened there, in Vatutinki. What happened, what ended up there, whether on purpose or something routine – hard to say. She was still on the national team roster and when we asked her, she said, “I didn’t take anything”. We have to believe her.”
Furosemide is a diuretic drug. It does not lead to performance enhancement as such but can be used to lose weight or to mask the use of other drugs. There are products contaminated with furosemide that can potentially lead to positive doping tests. For example, last year, WADA decreed that urine samples with the concentration of certain diuretics (including furosemide) below 20 ng/Ml should not be treated as positive tests. The RUSADA’s announcement did not specify the levels of furosemide in Simakova’s sample and did not provide any additional details.
