Simon Yates has not been suspended as his Orica-GreenEdge team bid to clear up a doctor’s error which led to a positive drugs test. The Australian team have accepted responsibility for Yates’ positive test for terbutaline, which is used to relieve asthma symptoms.
Orica-GreenEdge admitted an administrative error led to the medicine being administered without the required therapeutic use exemption certificate. The UCI on Friday morning said Yates, currently out with a knee injury sustained at the Tour of the Basque Country earlier this month, has not been provisionally suspended due to the nature of the substance involved.
A statement from the world governing body read: “The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) confirms that British rider Simon Yates has been notified of an adverse analytical finding of terbutaline in a sample collected in the scope of an in-competition control on March 12, 2016.
“As per the UCI’s anti-doping rules, such substance does not entail the imposition of a provisional suspension. The rider has the right to request and attend the analysis of the B sample. At this stage of the procedure, the UCI won’t comment any further.”
Orica-GreenEdge say they are attempting to clarify the situation with the UCI. “There has been no wrong-doing on Simon Yates’ part,” read a statement. “The team takes full responsibility for this mistake and wishes to underline their support for Simon during this process.”
Yates’s positive test was another twist at the end of the week that had seen the resignation of the British Cycling technical director Shane Sutton, but the facts presented by his team suggested that while the case would show up officially as an adverse analytical find, it looked more like administrative error than misconduct and would probably end with a slap on the wrist at worst.
A statement from Yates’s team Orica-GreenEdge confirmed that the Bury racer had tested positive for the anti-asthma drug Terburtaline after stage six of the Paris-Nice “Race to the Sun”. The team offered the explanation that the substance was part of an asthma treatment but that the team doctor had failed to apply for a Therapeutic Use Exemption, or TUE, which is required for legitimate use of a medicine which figures on the banned list.
“The substance was given to Simon Yates in the form of an asthma inhaler and accordingly this was noted by the team doctor on the Doping Control form signed at the time of the test,” added the statement. “The substance was given in an ongoing treatment of Simon Yates’s documented asthma problems. However, in this case the team doctor made an administrative error by failing to apply for the TUE required for the use of this treatment.”
The fact that the team doctor wrote the substance on the paperwork when Yates gave the sample suggested that the team and the rider were not trying to cover up the fact he was using the inhaler, although the question will be raised why they did not apply retrospectively for a TUE, as they are permitted to do under UCI rules “in exceptional circumstances, [if] there was insufficient time for the rider to submit an application prior to sample collection.” The assumption there has to be that Yates left the test caravan convinced that everything was in order.
“The use of Terbutaline without a current TUE is the reason it has been flagged as an adverse analytical finding,” continued the statement. “This is solely based on a human error that the doctor in question has taken full responsibility for. There has been no wrongdoing on Simon Yates’s part. The team takes full responsibility for this mistake and wishes to underline their support for Simon during this process.
“The team is concerned by the leak of this information and has no further comments until there has been a full evaluation of the documentation, statements and evidence that the team and Simon Yates are submitting to the UCI in order to clarify everything.”
Terbutaline is a fast-acting bronchial dilator, used for rapid treatment of asthma symptoms and to delay premature labour. It is banned in sport except when the appropriate TUE is presented to confirm that the athlete in question has medical cause to ingest the substance.
Its performance-enhancing benefits appear to be negligible even when inhaled on multiple occasions, particularly when compared with substances such as EPO or practices such as blood doping, and it appears that the main reason it is banned is to prevent abuse given some of the side-effects.
Asthma symptoms are common in high-level athletes - one study showed that 70% of British top level swimmers and around a third of Team Sky were registered asthmatics - but many register symptoms of what is termed “exercise-induced asthma”, brought on by rapid, heavy breathing combined with external factors such as chlorine in the swimming environment and cold air.
The UCI guidance on registering a TUE for Terbutaline state that an athlete must provide lung function test results, detailed medical history and clinical review and further tests. The WADA guidelines state there must also be “justification from the prescribing physician as to why permitted alternatives cannot be used.”
