Tomas Rodriguez says tainted chicken and eggs is the cause of his positive test
Mexican triathlete says his positive test is due to contaminated eggs and chicken, but WADA studies show ability to differentiate metabolites produced
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Patrick McDermott/Getty Images for Ironman
The triathlon world has been buzzing with the news from the International Testing Agency (ITA) that Mexico’s Tomas Rodriguez, the surprise winner of the Ironman North American Championship earlier this year, tested positive after the race for Clomiphene, a drug that’s used to boost testosterone levels.
Rodriguez has been “provisionally suspended” and the case has been referred to the International Hearing Panel.
What is the ITA
In January, 2023, Ironman handed over “Results Management” along with “Intelligence and Investigations” to the International Testing Agency. To run a compliant World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) program, an organization must have an investigations department. Ironman outsourced that component to the ITA. The ITA handles investigations around doping allegations, and all Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF) violations are reported to the ITA, which handles any legal matters that may arise through the process (arbitration, etc.)
What this does is provide transparency for Ironman. When an AAF is reported, it automatically goes to Ironman, WADA and the ITA at the same time. (In other words, Ironman can’t be accused of “covering up” any offences.)
Food contamination
Rodriguez has made a statement regarding the announcement yesterday on social media (see below).
“I want to be clear and transparent about this situation and explain that Clomiphene was detected at minimal levels in the sample,” he wrote. “I want to emphasize that these levels are extremely low and are not consistent with the intentional use of the substance to enhance performance.”
“The presence of Clomiphene in my system is due to the inadvertent consumption of contaminated food, specifically eggs and chicken, which are abundant in my diet,” Rodriguez continued. “These foods contained traces of the substance, leading to the unexpected positive result.”
“Additionally, I want to point out that my biological passport, which monitors hormone levels over time, shows completely normal ranges with no sign of doping,” Rodriguez said in his statement.
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Anti-doping procedures
We will likely have to wait for the hearing panel for more details on this case, but according to an anti-doping official we spoke with last year, Dr. Matthew Fedoruk, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s Chief Science Officer, officials would have taken that biological passport into consideration before suspending Rodriguez, and also used the increased sensitivity of testing procedures to assess the samples.
Testers would likely have also checked into the type of clomiphene in the sample. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) commissioned a study in 2019 to study whether or not trace amounts of the drug could be found in eggs or poultry. The study was able to differentiate between the metabolites produced between “egg consumers and the comparator group.”
Are “the top guys doping?” And, if they are, is there any hope of catching them?
“A good example, in addition to the passport, of how the science is keeping up is the increase of sensitivity of the testing over the last 10 years,” Dr. Fedoruk told us earlier this year. “We’ve seen roughly a thousand-fold increase in the ability to actually detect these prohibited substances in samples. With the advent of new instrumentation methodology we’re down to a trillionth of a gram of substance in a millilitre of urine. To put that in perspective, that’s like a few grains of sugar in an Olympic size swimming pool.”
In addition to the increased sensitivity, scientists are now able to go back and test older samples to test athletes up to years after they provided the blood samples thanks to the “discovery of metabolites that will remain in urine for longer periods of time,” he continued, which has led to “dozens of positive tests that were retrospective in nature.”
Due process
“Athletes are afforded due process in order to make sure that we are indeed bringing anti-doping violations against those that are doping,” Dr. Fedoruk told us. “That biological passport acts as another tool to be used to do that.”
“The thing that keeps me up at night is the detection of some of these complex substances that our bodies produce naturally that as anti-doping authorities we need to be able to differentiate what is supposed to be there, what our bodies produce, and what might be synthetic in nature,” he continued. “In many instances the molecules are virtually identical in nature, so you have to have tests in place to be able to differentiate those two in addition to using the biological passport to alert you when the markers might be abnormal.”
As is standard with these cases, the ITA won’t comment on the case “during the ongoing proceeding.” Rodriguez says he’ll “communicate any further updates as soon as I have more information.” We’ll continue to monitor this story.
