Oleg Verniaiev finally revealed the reason why he has been suspended for over half a year – he tested positive for meldonium in November. The Gymnastics Ethics Foundation (GEF) gave him a four-year ban which he now plans to appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Verniaiev wrote on his social media accounts:
“There are situations in life that seem as though they’re testing how strong you are. That’s exactly the situation happening in my life right now. GEF Arbitration made a decision that the amount of meldonium found in my body is enough to disqualify me for four years. Starting from November of last year. That means that I won’t go to the Olympics.”
“The main question is how the prohibited substance ended up in my body? Why did it happen during the period without big international competitions, during the time of lighter training? Why only one test had a positive result and not a single one from almost ten subsequent tests confirmed the presence of the prohibited substance?”
“A positive test only points to the fact of the presence of a prohibited substance in one’s body but does not prove an athlete’s fault. If an athlete is sure he’s not at fault, he shouldn’t give up. GEF Arbitration made a decision that can be appealed. Since the decision is subject to appeal, it’s too early to draw conclusions. My fight is only starting, it’s the next stage of my life and, as always, I will fight till the end and will appeal GEF’s decision regarding my disqualification in the CAS. I believe that the highest sports court will put everything in the right place.”
“Thank you to everyone who’s by my side during that difficult period for your support. The sport taught me to go out on the competition floor even when I’m injured and win anyway. I’m sure that’s what will happen now as well.”
As multiple European and World medalist, Verniaiev was subject to frequent out-of-competition testing for doping. Initially, when he was suspended, there were rumors of a two-year ban for a whereabouts failure (missing three doping tests or failing to notify the doping agency of one’s whereabouts three times in a 12-month period). However, the reality ended up being both sadder and weirder.
If the word “meldonium” sounds familiar, that’s because it was all over the news in 2016. Meldonium is on the WADA’s list of metabolic modulators that are prohibited in and out of competition. Any quantity of meldonium in urine is subject to a doping ban. The drug was added to the list of prohibited substances on January 1st of 2016 and the first half of that year was when we heard about multiple cases of doping bans for meldonium. Among the most famous was Maria Sharapova who first got banned for 2 years and then her ban was reduced to 15 months. Nikolai Kuksenkov of the Russian gymnastics team was temporarily suspended after testing positive in the beginning of 2016. However, the WADA later admitted that athletes can test positive for meldonium long after they stopped taking it and allowed the presence of small quantities of meldonium (less than 1 microgram per milliliter) in the tests done before September 1 of 2016. Since Kuksenkov’s results were below this limit, his suspension was lifted.
Suspensions for meldonium are mostly either for two years or four years. Four years is the ban for a first-time instance of deliberate doping. Athletes who are able to prove that doping was inadvertent can receive a two-year ban or get even further reduction depending on the circumstances. One of the reasons for reducing the period of ban can be admitting fault – if an athlete admits they deliberately took the banned substances. However, Verniaiev insists he did not take meldonium knowingly and does not know how the drug could enter his system.
If Verniaiev were able to prove, for example, that his drink was spiked with meldonium without his knowledge or it was an unlisted ingredient in a food supplement he took, the period of ineligibility could be reduced and he could still be able to continue his gymnastics career. For example, in 2018, Russian bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva tested positive for trimetazidine, another drug on the list of banned metabolic modulators. She was able to prove the drug was an unlisted component of a supplement that was prescribed to her and the period of ineligibility was reduced by the CAS.
If Verniaiev is not successful in his appeal, he will miss not only the Tokyo Olympics but also the 2024 Paris Olympics as his ban would continue until November of 2024. He will be 31 years old when the ban ends, not exactly a prime age for artistic gymnastics. The four-year ban not only effectively ends Verniaiev’s career as a competitive athlete it also hinders his ability to stay involved in Ukrainian gymnastics. According to the article 10.9 of the FIG Anti-Doping Rules Violations, an ineligible (banned) person is not allowed to participate in competitions or activities of any signatory organizations in any capacity. That means, Verniaiev will not be allowed to coach the national team, to train with them, to have an administrative position in the Ukrainian federation and so on. Verniaiev has been doing gymnastics for most of his life, his degree is in coaching and the kind of education and experience he got did not prepare him for a career outside of gymnastics.
There are quite a lot of misconceptions about meldonium, and I’ll address some of them here.
What does meldonium even do?
Theoretically, meldonium is supposed to help with heart function and is prescribed for various heart conditions in the FSU countries. The drug was invented in the USSR in the 1970s. However, there is no reliable evidence that meldonium actually has any effect on heart conditions. There is also no evidence that meldonium has any effect on athletic performance.
When meldonium was developed, standards for clinical studies were different. It is possible to conduct a new clinical study to test the effects but no one is going do to it. The patent on the drug has run out and Western pharmaceutical companies are not interested in spending money on clinical studies of drugs that are not patented. The lack of clinical studies is the reason why meldonium has not been approved in the US and other Western countries. And since clinical studies are not required for approval of the drug in Russia, there is no incentive for the main producers of meldonium to conduct any studies.
But why do people take it if it’s useless? And they claim it helps!
History of humanity knows many cases of questionable medical practices. There are plenty of people who believe in homeopathic cures. Bloodletting was a wide-spread medical procedure for a long time. There are people who swear by Reiki and energy healing. Come up with a new weird pseudoscientific cure and you’ll find people who will believe in it.
If there’s no proven performance-enhancing effect, why was it banned?
Well, the WADA is not necessarily the most reasonable authority and the evidence for inclusion of certain substances on the prohibited list can be dubious. For example, in a review of studies that examined the performance-enhancing qualities of the substances on the prohibited list, the authors found evidence of athletic performance enhancement for only 5 out of 23 substances. According to the authors, for 11 substances there were simply no studies that examined the performance enhancement effect and for the rest of the substances there were studies and they found no effect. And even for the 5 substances where effects were found, the evidence is not necessarily good enough – there were only 11 studies with 266 subjects between them. This is a tiny number of subjects for medical studies. The WADA could have initiated or financed studies of the substances on their list but they haven’t and their decisions about inclusion of new substances in the prohibited list are clearly not based on science. The main reason for banning meldonium was probably because lots of athletes from one specific region (the FSU countries) were taking it and that appeared suspicious to the WADA.
US sports fans probably have the latest track doping scandals fresh in their memories. A sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson tested positive for marijuana and received a one-month ban which effectively makes her miss the Olympics. An automatic ban for substances like marijuana is three months but it can be reduced to one month if an athlete agrees to attend substance abuse counseling. When the news of the incident became public, many wondered how marijuana can make someone run faster. Indeed, there is no evidence it can. Marijuana is on the prohibited list because it’s “against the spirit of the sport” but tobacco and alcohol are perfectly aligned with that spirit, it seems. Many US fans got upset that marijuana, a substance legal in many US states, is prohibited by the WADA but, in fact, they have their own government to blame for that. The US government lobbied the IOC and WADA in the late 90s to include marijuana on the list in order to promote “drug-free sports”.
Another scandal in the US track involved a supposedly contaminated burrito. Shelby Houlihan, a middle distance runner, tested positive for an anabolic steroid called nandrolone. Anabolic steroids are among the few substances on the prohibited list that actually do enhance athletic performance but Houlihan claimed the traces of steroid came from a pork burrito she ate the night before the test. The current doping tests are so sensitive they can discover even very small quantities of steroids and it is technically possible to ingest something contaminated with nandrolone. Moreover, in 2008, Jarrion Lawson, a US long jumper, was able to prove his positive test for trenbolone (another anabolic steroid) came from contaminated meat and had his suspension overturned. Houlihan, however, was not so lucky even though additional tests corroborated her claims of a one-time oral ingestion (anabolic steroids are normally injected, not taken by mouth) and the ban was upheld.
Both of those cases point to the fact that the list of prohibited substances and current testing and appeal procedures need revisions but it seems that the WADA cares more about upholding arbitrary rules than about the health of actual athletes and the potentially bad effects real doping can have.
But wasn’t Russia banned from the Olympics for meldonium?
No, the state-organized doping program that was uncovered in 2014 is something completely different. There is evidence that Russian authorities encouraged athletes to use doping, supplied the banned performance-enhancing substances, and tampered with the samples to ensure that athletes did not test positive. Meldonium, on the other hand, was not on the list of banned substances until 2016, and was perfectly legal for athletes to take. Many athletes in Russia and other FSU countries took it, often according to the recommendations of team doctors, but that practice ended in 2016.
What is interesting is that Verniaiev claims only one of his samples contained medonium and none of the subsequent doping tests were positive for the substance. Meldonium takes a long time to be processed by one’s body and a person can test positive for months after taking it. That is why athletes who stopped taking meldonium in 2015 still tested positive in 2016. According to Ivars Kalvinsh, the person who developed meldonium back in the 70s, a person can fully metabolize one pill and test clean between 3 and 15 days after taking that single pill (exact time is very individual). However, athletes who use meldonium don’t normally take just one pill – the supposed effects (whether real or not), according to Kalvinsh, starts after 10 days of taking the pills and in this case, an athlete’s urine would contain meldonium for longer.
Recently, two Russian rowers tested positive for meldonium. The athletes claim meldonium was one of the ingredients of food supplements they took and they were not aware those supplements contained meldonium. This seems to be a common theory among many other Russian athletes that tested positive in the past two years. However, to date, no athlete has been able to provide proof of that mysterious meldonium-laced supplement.
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Brilliant article, thanks. I knew WADA rules were a bit of a mess but they are even worse than I thought!
If I remember correctly, Marijuana can be used as a masking drug which is why it is banned
That’s not why WADA banned it. Masking substances result in the same length of bans as performance-enhancing substances, so the sprinter would’ve gotten a 2 or 4-year ban. This is what happens when someone tests positive for furosemide, a masking substance. Substances that can be abused like marijuana result in one of three-month bans.
Ugh…I’m sorry for Verniaiev. I was wondering why he was suspended.