Since the beginning of women’s sports, a question has loomed: who qualifies as female? Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. This episode asks: Would you alter your body for the chance to compete for a gold medal?

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On July 30, 2021, the fastest female sprinters in the world bounced out their nerves and adjusted their blocks in preparation for the semifinals of the 100 meters at the Tokyo Olympics. Amid the prerace tension, in the center of the track, lane five sat conspicuously empty. Just hours before the event, Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare had received a provisional suspension from the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the anti-doping organization that oversees international track and field.

Leading into the Games, the then 32-year-old Okagbare had run the 100 faster than ever, clocking multiple sub-11-second times and equaling the world record at the Nigerian national championships. (The times were unofficial, as judges deemed them wind-assisted.) Without the last-minute sanction, says , CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), “she was going to be in the final. There’s no doubt about that, if you look at her times and the drugs she was using to win.”

The investigation had begun months before, after a fellow athlete discovered performance-enhancing drugs—or PEDs—addressed to Okagbare and sent a tip to the USADA. While Okagbare was competing in Slovakia and Nigeria, USADA and the AIU administered two targeted drug tests—one came back positive for growth hormone, and the other showed traces of the banned blood booster EPO. Under the old rules governing American anti-doping, the investigation would likely have concluded with Okagbare’s suspension. But because of a federal law enacted in December 2020, the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act (RADA), the FBI and prosecutors from the Department of Justice began an investigation to see whether Okagbare could lead them to a bigger offender.

When Okagbare returned home from Tokyo, federal agents were waiting at the airport. As she stepped onto U.S. soil, an operative with the FBI asked to see her phone. Incriminating messages on Okagbare’s WhatsApp eventually led to doping sanctions for three additional Olympic-level track athletes and a jail sentence for the man who supplied them with PEDs—a Texan named Eric Lira.

In May 2023, Lira, a self-described kinesiologist and naturopath from El Paso, became the first person convicted under the Rodchenkov Act. He faces a maximum ten-year prison sentence and a fine of up to one million dollars.

International Politics and Anti-Doping

Using testimony from Rodchenkov, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) issued a damning report on Russia’s flagrant cheating and recommended excluding the country’s track and field team from the 2016 Rio Olympics. But the International Olympic Committee, an organization riddled with conflicts of interest and frequently beset with corruption scandals, allowed Russian athletes to compete at subsequent Olympic Games—just not under Russia’s flag.

That lack of accountability on the international stage deeply concerned policy advisers in the U.S. who study the rise of authoritarian governments. Russia’s state-run doping has been viewed by Congress as a national-security issue. If a country can essentially steal Olympic medals, what else might it try to get away with?

“International sport is a lot more important for the rest of the world than it is for us,” says Paul Massaro, a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, which monitors human rights around the world and helped draft the Rodchenkov Act. “For Russia and China in particular, they’re massive. There’s a reason these autocratic countries keep hosting the Games. They view them as a way to say, ‘Hey, look at all the medals we’re winning, look how big and powerful we are. Don’t fuck with us.’”

Don’t fuck with us indeed. Following the release of WADA’s Russia report, two top officials at the Russian anti-doping laboratory mysteriously died. When Rodchenkov, who lives in the U.S. under witness protection, testified in favor of the law bearing his name, he wore a ski mask to conceal his current appearance.

The Rodchenkov Act applies to any event attended by at least one U.S. athlete and three or more international athletes, and broadcast or sponsored by a U.S. business or organization. It specifically targets doping networks: doctors, trainers, and drug suppliers who work with multiple athletes. The law also offers certain protections—for example, an athlete who acted alone can’t be prosecuted under RADA. Nor can one who unintentionally ingested a banned substance.

For two-time U.S. Olympic runner Molly Huddle, the protections helped garner her support for the law. “Much of the criticism I heard was, ‘We don’t need to be throwing more people in jail,’” said Huddle. “Instead, the law focuses on the outer rings of doping conspiracies.”

Additionally, RADA has extraterritorial jurisdiction, meaning that citizens of other countries involved in doping networks can be arrested in the U.S. or charged under the law and then extradited back to their home country. This power could be applied to cases like that of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, who tested positive at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 when she was 15.

“If evidence is collected on Russian individuals who were involved in doping that athlete and defrauding those Olympics, and then those individuals come to the U.S., they can be arrested at the airport,” says Massaro. “We have the World Cup and the Olympics coming to the United States within the next five years. There’s an expectation that these should be the cleanest Games ever.”

A Method for Exposing Drug Rings

Other messages showed that Okagbare sought Lira’s guidance as the authorities closed in on her. Ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, on June 13, 2021, a USADA agent arrived at Okagbare’s home to collect a sample for an unscheduled test. Anti-doping authorities suspected Okagbare was using EPO, among other substances. She didn’t answer the door.

Instead, she messaged Lira: “So I took 2000ui of the E yesterday, is it safe to take a test this morning?” Lira replied: “Good day, 2000 ui is a low dosage.”

“Remember I took it Wednesday and then yesterday again,” Okagbare wrote. “I wasn’t sure so I didn’t take a test. I just let them go so it will be a missed test.”

The close call didn’t faze Okagbare. Nine days later, she ran 10.63 seconds to match the wind-assisted world record in the 100. Okagbare messaged Lira: “Hola amigo. Eric my body feel so good. I am sooooo happy Ericccccccc. Whatever you did, is working so well.” Lira would later reply, “What you did is going to help you for the upcoming events. You are doing your part and you will be ready to dominate.”

Eventually Okagbare’s luck ran out, and one of the tests came back positive for human growth hormone. On the day of her provisional suspension ahead of the Olympic semifinals, on July 30, 2021, she sent Lira a copy of her positive HGH test result and wrote, “Call me urgently. I don’t understand.” Lira advised Okagbare to claim she’d consumed contaminated meat, a known cause of inadvertent positive tests.

Later, faced with potential jail time, Lira became less supportive. In May 2023, in a Manhattan courtroom, he pleaded guilty to the Rodchenkov Act charges. He also provided USADA with information that led to the sanctioning of Okagbare’s Nigerian teammate Divine Oduduru; triple jumper Sabina Allen, who competes for Jamaica; and Jamaican-born sprinter Alex Wilson, who competes for Switzerland. More sanctions may be forthcoming from Lira’s case.

In the past, similar criminal investigations that treated doping as fraud proved effective in exposing athletes. Using search warrants and subpoenas in the notorious BALCO scandal, which unveiled a doping ring operating out of a California laboratory, federal investigators discovered rampant PED use among baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Olympic sprinter Marion Jones. In 2012, after federal agents forced teammates of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong to testify under oath, they uncovered an extensive, deeply entrenched doping program.

But without an apparatus like the Rodchenkov Act in place, the case against Armstrong eventually stalled. Federal prosecutors lacked a strong legal framework to take it to trial, and the investigation didn’t yield meaningful potential criminal penalties. A fraud case involving Armstrong and those complicit in his team’s doping program was ultimately dropped by the U.S. Attorney’s office. USADA did eventually use the information obtained by federal agents to issue a lifetime ban on Armstrong.

Hopes For a Cleaner Future

I raced on the U.S. national cycling team and at the elite level during the Armstrong era, and later wrote about the sport’s culture of doping both at home and abroad. I saw how team doctors, owners, and racing officials fostered cheating yet often escaped accountability when busts occurred. Athletes who tested positive were punished, and the investigations stopped there. I knew that few cheaters acted alone; doping flourished in cycling because enablers existed at every level. After watching case after case fail to excise drug use from the sport, the message seemed to be that doping did in fact pay.

With the Rodchenkov Act, authorities now have the power to ascend the PED chain from athlete to coach to supplier and beyond. By sharing information with law enforcement and threatening criminal prosecution, anti-doping agencies can stymie entire doping conspiracies, not just individual athletes.

“Sport affects culture. And if sport tips toward the disempowering, ugly side of competition, then a lot of things are going to tip that way,” says Huddle. “It’s like letting a part of your body be sick and being like, ‘Whatever, it’s not going to affect the rest of me.’ But it will eventually.”

Not everybody likes the Rodchenkov Act as much as I do. The World Anti Doping Agency actually lobbied against it. In a statement, WADA president Witold Banka expressed concern over the law’s extraterritorial jurisdiction and noted the exclusion of U.S. professional and collegiate leagues like the NFL and NCAA. “These leagues were originally included in the act but were subsequently removed without explanation,” he said. “If it is not good enough for American sports, why is it being imposed on the rest of the world?”

When I asked Tygart what safeguards existed to prevent overreach, he pointed to the due-process protections already built into the U.S. criminal justice system. In the case against Lira, the Rodchenkov Act survived its first legal challenge. A pretrial motion filed by Lira’s lawyer claimed that the law violated the Constitution, in that Lira’s right to free speech protected his messages with Okagbare. A judge ultimately denied the motion, stating that “speech integral to criminal conduct” isn’t protected.

The Rodchenkov Act will face further challenges and additional scrutiny. If it’s used as intended, those who’ve accrued wealth and power by corrupting sport—in the U.S. and around the world—will be held to account. If successful, the law will bring about more ethical competition, and perhaps a more just society.

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On January 1, 2024, will kick in that officially bans tramadol, an opioid painkiller. It’s been a long time coming: the abuse of tramadol has been an open secret in cycling, with about its use by Team Sky and British Cycling. “It kills the pain in your legs, and you can push really hard,” former Team Sky rider Michael Barry . found tramadol in 4.4 percent of all samples from cyclists, leading to worries that tramadol-addled riders would cause crashes in the peloton. For some athletes, like , tramadol was a gateway to full-blown opioid addiction. The International Cycling Union banned it in 2019, but WADA continued to take a wait-and-see approach.

The data that finally changed WADA’s mind has in the Journal of Applied Physiology, where it’s free to read. A group led by Alexis Mauger of the University of Kent in Britain put 27 highly trained cyclists through a series of performance tests with either 100 milligrams of tramadol (a modest dose: Kirkland was taking as much as 20 times that amount at once) or a taste-matched placebo. The riders were, on average, 1.3 percent faster in a 25-mile time trial when taking tramadol. WADA’s rules require that a substance fulfill two of three conditions to be banned: it enhances performance, has the potential to harm the athlete, and violates the spirit of sport. Mauger’s data sealed tramadol’s fate.

That’s the simple part of the story. Or at least, the relatively simple part. Admittedly, previous studies of tramadol’s performance-boosting effects have produced mixed results. Mauger and his colleagues argue that these previous studies have featured performance tests that weren’t long or hard enough for pain control to matter, failed to exclude participants who had side effects like vomiting from the drug, or muddied the waters by having cyclists complete cognitive tests while they tried to race. It’s also worth asking whether the benefits of a painkiller might be exaggerated in a test where the subjects are forced to fixate on their own discomfort, giving continuous ratings of exactly how much they’re hurting, compared to the real world. Still, the new results make a strong case that tramadol boosts performance and should thus be banned. The harder question is why it works.

In 2010, Mauger published showing a 2 percent boost for cyclists taking a simple dose of Tylenol. He has followed up with other studies using various techniques like saline injections to manipulate exercise-associated pain. In Mauger’s view, pain is one of the sensations that causes us to slow down or stop during endurance exercise, so the tramadol results make perfect sense.

Not everyone agrees, though. When I wrote about Mauger’s research on pain in 2020, I noted that other researchers such as Walter Staiano and Samuele Marcora believe that subjective perception of effort (“the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop”) is more important than pain (“the conscious sensation of aching and burning in the active muscles”). Staiano and Marcora have published supporting their contention that we quit when effort maxes out, even when the pain we’re experiencing is still tolerable. There may be ways of reconciling these two views: perhaps the cognitive effort of managing increased pain makes exercise feel more effortful, for example. But it’s still an open debate, which makes any new data on the question particularly interesting.

And the details of Mauger’s data, it turns out, are indeed curious. For starters, here are the five-mile splits for the tramadol (open circles) and placebo (closed circles) conditions in the 25-mile time trial:

The tramadol riders are pulling ahead right from the first split, and continue to widen their lead throughout the trial. One interesting wrinkle: riders who scored higher on a psychological test of pain resilience—that is, those who felt they had better ability to regulate their emotions and thoughts about pain—tended to get a bigger performance boost from tramadol. To be honest, this is the exact opposite of what I expected: I would have guessed that those who struggle most with managing pain would get the biggest benefit from reducing it.

Immediately before the time trial, the cyclists did a 30-minute ride at a hard but steady predetermined pace, while rating their perceived effort every five minutes and continuously noting any changes in their perceived pain. Here’s what that data looked like (pain above, effort or RPE below):

Now we have a conundrum. Tramadol, an opioid painkiller, appears to have had no effect whatsoever on the pain experienced during cycling. On the other hand, it significantly lowered the perception of effort, which in turn—as predicted by Staiano and Marcora—improved performance. Mauger and his colleagues aren’t sure how to explain this: they suggest that the continuous self-reporting of pain, as opposed to being asked about it every five minutes, might have made it harder to pick up small changes. I’m not sure what to make of this finding, but it reaffirms my sense that we still have a lot to learn about how pain and effort and other related constructs like mental fatigue influence our performance.

As for tramadol, its new status will end the longstanding ambiguity about its use. Nairo Quintana, the Colombian cycling star, —twice—during the 2022 Tour de France, and was stripped of his sixth-place finish. But it was deemed a medical issue rather than a doping positive, since tramadol wasn’t banned by WADA, and thus carried no suspension. Starting next year, any athlete caught using it won’t be so lucky.

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“I am the fastest man in the world. But you’ve never heard of me.” These are the tantalizing opening lines of the promo video for the , a prospective annual athletic competition slated to take place for the first time in December 2024. The idea is to feature the traditional Olympic disciplines of track and field, swimming, combat sports, gymnastics, and weightlifting without prohibiting the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The man behind this controversial proposal is the Australian litigator Aron D’Souza, Peter Thiel’s successful lawsuit against Gawker Media. This time, the enemy isn’t a muckraking website, but the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agencies—organizations which, in D’Souza’s view, are either irredeemably corrupt or “anti-science.” D’Souza, who is gay, of the Enhanced Games as being analogous to the LGBTQ community’s fight against bigotry. The organization’s logo is strikingly similar to the yellow and blue equal sign of the Human Rights Campaign. The nameless (and fictitious) narrator in the promo video asserts that he is a proud enhanced athlete. “I need your help to come out,” he says. “I need your help to stop hate.”

Why would we want something like the Enhanced Games? When I spoke with Brett Fraser, a former Olympic swimmer for the Cayman Islands who serves as the organization’s “Chief Athletes Officer,” he told me that the idea was to “create a better environment for athletes to perform in.” In practice, this means coming up with more financial incentives for athletes to take part in the Games via a still-to-be-determined profit-sharing model and “allowing the athletes to use science and medicine to enhance their bodies if they choose to do so with clinical supervision.” Fraser repeatedly used the phrase “leveling the playing field” when advocating for this doping-positive stance; the basic idea is that, since some athletes are already using PEDs in secret, why not make drugs legal and hence available to all? Pushing back against the notion that this could result in dangerous orgy of self-medication, Fraser told me that every enhanced athlete would need to have their PED regime approved by the Enhanced Games’ board of doctors and scientists. How that system is supposed to work without some kind of testing to ensure that the athletes are telling the truth about what they are taking remains unclear. For his part, D’Souza (who was not available for an interview with șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű) has frequently defended the idea of the Enhanced Games in libertarian terms, responding to concerns about potentially jeopardizing athlete health with the argument that consenting adults should be free to decide what they choose to consume, without the paternalistic oversight of a governing body. He is fond of the slogan: “My body, my choice.”

I had other questions about the Enhanced Games that Fraser didn’t have an answer for at the moment. He assured me that more would be revealed in the coming weeks. Where will the inaugural event take place? The Enhanced Games is in discussions with several potential venues, including college campuses. How will they make money? The Enhanced Games will be privately funded at first, but has been in conversations with several “large media companies” about media and television rights and has had a lot of interest from a “host of well-known brands” for sponsorships. Have any athletes committed to the inaugural event? The Enhanced Games has allegedly heard from over 500 athletes indicating their support and intention to compete, but no names can be revealed as yet. Will the Enhanced Games actually take place next year? The first Games might end up being more of “an exhibition” where we’ll see a “massive feat” or “very impressive performance.” I’m going to hold off on booking my tickets for now.

It’s tempting to dismiss all of this as a frivolous made-for-social-media stunt that repurposes the jargon of liberal causes in the most cynical way possible. ( with the heading “Science Is Real.”) Nonetheless, I’d argue that the concept of the Enhanced Games raises some interesting questions about the foundations of our current anti-doping sentiment. When we get angry about dopers, it’s almost always because we believe that honest, clean athletes have been robbed of fair competition. But the Enhanced Games seems to solve that problem at the outset. A scathing describes the initiative as “an Olympics where cheaters can prosper.” The fallacy here is that if doping is officially permitted then nobody is being deceived. That’s not to say that the Enhanced Games is a wonderful idea, but a cogent challenge can’t only take the line that the project is pernicious because it encourages cheating.

The notion of a dopers Olympics has been around for a long time, both as a punchline and as a serious polemic. As the video for the Enhanced Games made the rounds on Twitter, a few people linked a : It’s the “all drug Olympics” and Phil Hartman is a maximally juiced Soviet weightlifter who accidentally rips off both of his arms while trying to clean and jerk 1,500 pounds. Implicit in the joke is the serious critique that embracing performance-enhancing drugs comes with major health risks. For example, there have been linking the use of anabolic steroids with . , in particular, seem especially at risk for cardiac arrest and other forms of organ failure. Earlier this year, in a , Arnold Schwarzenegger warned that steroid use in his former sport is totally out of control: “Now people are dying—they’re dying because of overdoses of drugs.”

The former Mr. Universe defends his own steroid use by claiming that he took them under careful medical supervision before they . This brings up an issue that has been used as an argument for legalizing PEDs: banning potentially dangerous drugs means that the athletes who will nonetheless use them will be disincentivized from seeking medical advice. Likewise, medical professionals will be less able to effectively evaluate the risks when PED use is happening underground. The latter point comes up by Bengt Kayser, a former professor of sports medicine at the University in Geneva: “In a context of prohibition and penalties for use that discourage scientific assessment of the risks, declaring that doping is dangerous becomes, to some extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy, since doping often happens without proper medical supervision or evidence from sound clinical trials.”

In a 2013 article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine titled “,” Julian Savulescu, a professor of ethics at Oxford University, argues that legalizing some forms of doping would ultimately make elite sports safer. (D’Souza has cited Savulescu’s work as one of the inspirations for the Enhanced Games.) His position is similar to the legalize-and-regulate take on recreational drugs. Current prohibitions on doping haven’t worked; cheating is rampant in elite sport. So why not introduce a more permissive system where drug consumption can be monitored? Rather than advocating for an everything-goes philosophy, Savulescu argues that the most harmful PEDs, like anabolic steroids, should still be banned—but that others, even EPO, should be allowed up to a predetermined threshold. As he sees it, the deciding factor about whether to ban a substance should hinge solely on athlete safety, and not on whether it gives an athlete a competitive advantage. As he puts it: “Performance enhancement is not against the spirit of sport; it is the spirit of sport.”

Needless to say, this is a rather contentious claim—and one that is antithetical to which explicitly states that “drug-enhanced performance is incompatible with athletic and human excellence.” But is there anything more at stake here than competing value judgments about what constitutes genuine athletic performance? When I spoke to Shawn Klein, who is an associate professor in philosophy at Arizona State University and runs a website called , he pointed out that the “spirit of the sport” is a malleable concept, especially since we condone any number of performance enhancers—e.g. super shoes, altitude tents, caffeine—which purists might regard as cheating. Klein also argued that, as with shifting attitudes towards recreational drugs, our aversion to PEDs in sports is largely culturally determined and hence prone to change over time.

While I take his point, I’m a little skeptical of Klein’s analogy between recreational drugs and PEDs. For one thing, the competition incentive of elite sports feels like a crucial difference here. The constant need to push the envelope and find an edge over your opponent means that lifting bans on PEDs would result in a physiological Pandora’s box. Once you allow PEDs, you are effectively mandating that anyone who wants a shot at glory needs to use them.

For sports scientist Ross Tucker, the prospective price of embracing PEDs is less a question of ideology than about the unintended consequences of a sports landscape that “normalizes unethical medical practices.” While he can see the rationale in only banning certain substances and setting “safe” limits on others, Tucker notes that this would be very difficult to implement in practice—not least because our understanding of the effects of certain drugs is based on the highly restrictive limits of the current system. “Once you start going through the drugs to assign them to your ‘banned’ and ‘regulated’ lists (and maybe another list for ‘permitted entirely’), it becomes really difficult to decide what to put on each,” Tucker says. “There are substances that we think are safe, but that’s because they’ve only ever been used in small doses.” Moreover, as Tucker points out, the “regulated” list would invite the same problem for drug testers that we have right now: How do you ensure athletes are staying below the prescribed limit the entire time, and not just on the day that they happened to be tested?

This would, of course, not be an issue at the Enhanced Games. Here, top performers can brag about their awesome drug regimen in post-race interviews and heap praise on the enterprising doctors who managed to turn them into athletic demigods without exploding any of their vital organs in the process. But, back in the real world, which doctor would be willing to take on this level of liability? Tucker, who is a research consultant for World Rugby, told me that many contact sports are having trouble recruiting doctors for in-game concussion analysis because of the potential legal consequences of making a bad assessment. So how likely is it that there will be hordes of doctors lining up to try their hand at a new kind of unrestricted superdoping? As Tucker points out, while there have certainly been medical professionals who were willing to help elite athletes dope in the past, these doctors have had the benefit of needing to fly under the current anti-doping radar. Remove that restriction, and the risk becomes much more acute. “I just can’t see how the medical community could possibly enable the Enhanced Games,” Tucker says.

To some extent, the practical and ethical viability of the Enhanced Games can inspire separate debates. But the medical implications of what’s being proposed represents a clear overlap. Those who criticize the current anti-doping infrastructure are not necessarily wrong, but I think they often underestimate the basic value of deterrence. The fact that we still have dopers doesn’t mean that the current system doesn’t work; the point is that even their transgressions are, to some degree, moderated by the rules. For that reason, the best argument against the Enhanced Games might be something as banal as: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

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When it comes to sports controversies, beer mile competitions aren’t usually the first thing that springs to mind. Unless you’re a neo-prohibitionist, the spectacle of seeing a bunch of loonies chugging beers and running laps around a track is unlikely to offend your sense of decency. However, the Beer Mile World Classic earlier this month ended up evoking strong feelings among participants and fans alike for allowing the suspended world-class miler Shelby Houlihan to take part. Houlihan is roughly two and a half years into a four-year ban for testing positive for the banned steroid nandrolone—a violation she has famously attributed to a bad burrito—but the terms of her suspension only apply to official USATF and World Athletics-sanctioned events. Since the Beer Mile World Classic doesn’t fall under this jurisdiction, it was up to event organizers to figure out what to do when the American record-holder in the 1,500-meters expressed an interest in competing. In the end, the World Classic decided that Houlihan would not be allowed to take part in the women’s championships, but that she could still run in the “Legends and Elites” division, the de facto “B” race of the men’s championships. Houlihan ended up drinking four beers and running a mile in five minutes and 43 seconds—a new women’s world record. Depending on your point of view, the performance either helped elevate the profile of the obscure sport of beer miling, or stained its reputation.

“We got a lot of emails from both sides,” says Chris Robertson, the co-founder of beermile.com and a co-producer of the World Classic. “People who loved seeing Shelby race and thought it was amazing and people who hated us for it. We knew that any tough decision is going to lead to pros and cons. I can’t tell you how many phone calls we had discussing this and all the different angles of it.”

Initially, Robertson was in favor of letting Houlihan compete in the women’s championships. Her celebrity would “bring more eyeballs” to the event and there was nothing in the rules that made her ineligible. What’s more, and as Robertson pointed out to me, it seemed exclusionary to bar Houlihan from competing on the basis of a doping suspension when none of the other athletes are subject to drug testing. However, after a number of women in the championship heat expressed concerns about racing against a suspended athlete, the organizers of the Beer Mile World Classic decided against letting Houlihan vie for the women’s title.

Among the women who raised the issue with the organizers was Elizabeth Laseter, the eventual 2023 Beer Mile World Classic champion, whose personal best of 6:03.75 is now second only to Houlihan’s performance .“We found out just a few weeks before the event and it didn’t feel quite right in our heads,” Laseter told me. “It was nothing personal against Shelby, but we wanted to make sure that the needs of the athletes were being prioritized—that that aspect didn’t fall away in the interest of trying to grow the sport.”

Both Laseter and Robertson agree that it is a little contradictory to leave Houlihan out of the women’s championship race while still officially recognizing her world record. It was a compromise that was brought about by an unprecedented situation and, like any good compromise, it left all parties slightly dissatisfied. The plan is that future beer mile championships will have some kind of policy in place for athletes with doping suspensions even if, as Robertson stressed to me, the beer mile and regular track and field are “two entirely different sports.” (It’s worth mentioning that, at least in a professional context, the “different sport” defense might be irrelevant. According to article 10.14.1 of , a suspended athlete is prohibited from taking part in any competition organized by a professional league or government-funded entity.)

Things are perhaps more complicated when we’re talking about the same sport. Last year, there was backlash when Houlihan won the , an unsanctioned, low-key road race in her home state of Iowa, and received $500 for her efforts. Houlihan donated her winnings, yet there was admittedly something perverse about a banned athlete cleaning up against hobbyjoggers and getting a check. As sports columnist , it wasn’t great for the image of American running, especially since we tend to be pretty smug about rampant doping abuses in other countries. We would be up in arms, Abrahamson suggested, if a suspended Russian athlete competed in a race in Russia.

Two weeks after her record-setting beer mile, Houlihan once again ran a University of Okoboji Homecoming race. This year, she ran the 10K and won in 30:47, a time that was more than four minutes faster than the second place finisher and five seconds faster than Shalane Flanagan’s 2016 American record for a road 10K. Since the Okoboji course is not USATF-certified (and likely a little short), Houlihan’s performance wouldn’t have been record-eligible regardless of her ban. Still: a 30:47 solo performance from a suspended athlete is kind of hard to ignore. (By contrast, she ran 1:16 in last year’s half marathon—an unremarkable time by elite standards.)

Last week, on Jonathan Gault, an advocate of Houlihan’s innocence, said that he didn’t feel comfortable with the fact that she was racing. “I guess it’s not violating the conditions of her ban, but I would say it’s violating the spirit of her ban,” Gault said.

For her part, Houlihan says she took part in these races because she “needed running to feel fun again” and wanted a way to “take a small step back into the running community.” Houlihan, who remains adamant that she is being punished for something that she did not do, told me that the Okoboji races and the beer mile were the only events she has taken part in during her suspension and that she had checked with relevant authorities to ensure that this was in compliance with the rules. She says that she didn’t think competing in these races would be a big deal, and admits that that might have been a little naive on her part. “I do completely understand where people are coming from and why they would feel that way,” Houlihan says of those who don’t think she should be racing at all. “Before having been in the position that I’m in now, I probably would have felt the same. Having experienced what I have now though, I have a different opinion on it . . . I think small, unsanctioned races like these are important for finding some happiness and ways to move forward.”

On the one hand, it feels rather excessive to demand that suspended athletes also abstain from unsanctioned events. Pretty much every race of consequence is going to be off limits anyway. In his column, Abrahamson refers to the fact that Houlihan was allowed to compete in the Okoboji race as an ignominious “loophole” in our national anti-doping system. I think that’s overstating it. It would be a loophole if Houlihan was able to maneuver her way into a race that she would have wanted to compete in if she weren’t suspended, as when her team cynically tried on the basis that she was still trying to appeal her ban. But the University of Okoboji 10K? (I also don’t think it’s very likely that the U.S. running community would be particularly distraught if a banned Russian runner would jog their way to victory in a Vladivostok fun run.)

That said, and as Laseter’s case illustrates, fringe events still have a right to their own standards of athletic integrity. The question of who should enforce them, however, is another matter. I don’t think we should aspire to a system where USADA can adjudicate who is allowed to roll up at every small town turkey trot. But such races are certainly well within their right to develop their own rules about who can officially compete. The beer mile already has for other aspects of the competition; for example, all beers need to have an alcohol content of at least 5 percent and pukers need to run a penalty lap.

“People who do this at an elite level do take it very seriously. It is a fun event, but at the end of the day I think we shouldn’t have to make exceptions for a sport like the beer mile,” Laseter says of the participation of suspended athletes. “I just don’t think it’s fair for someone else to define what the beer mile is.”

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that American pro triathlete Collin Chartier tested positive for EPO from an out-of-competition test performed on February 10, 2023. Upon receipt of the positive test, Chartier admitted to the use of the banned substance to the agency, and as a result received a reduced ban of three years, down from four according to the ITA.

Erythropoietin, known as EPO, is prohibited under World Anti-Doping Agency regulations because it stimulates erythropoiesis (red blood cell production) and can modify the body’s capacity to transport oxygen, increasing stamina, and performance.

In a social media post released on Monday morning, Chartier went on to further admit his use of a “PED in November after feeling like I have lost my way in the sport,” due to “intense pressure and expectations to win the biggest races in 2024.” His post went on to say that he had no plans to return to the sport after the three-year ban was lifted.

Despite having a relatively inauspicious short course career, Chartier was an up-and-coming triathlete in the long-course scene.

Coached by Mikal Iden, the brother of reigning Ironman world champion Gustav, he was a shock winner of last year’s inaugural PTO U.S. Open in Dallas in September where he won $100,000 topping a highly competitive field including Magnus Ditlev and Sam Long.

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Training alongside two-time Ironman world championship runner-up Lionel Sanders, the victory came three weeks after his first full-distance Ironman victory in Mont-Tremblant. Chartier then had a disappointing debut in Hawaii in the Ironman World Championship in October when he finished 35th.

Prior to those results, Chartier’s highest competitive finish was a win at Challenge Salou in October 2021 and a third-place finish at 70.3 Boulder in August of the same year.

Fellow pros posting in response to Chartier’s Instagram message gave mixed comments, with 2014 Ironman world champion Sebastian Kienle saying: “Let me guess, you bought it on the internet and also learned how to use it – all from the internet. Nobody helped you, nobody knew.”

Former triathlete-turned-elite-runner Lauren Goss commented: “Dude brave of you . No one sees the mental health side. Walk through the fire.”

Despite being PTO-ranked No 14 and an automatic qualifier, Chartier was not on the start-list for May’s big money PTO European Open in Ibiza. He had originally planned to race Saturday’s Ironman Texas and had been training at altitude in California, Ecuador, and Girona in Spain.

The International Testing Agency (ITA), the testing body who administered and discovered the adverse finding is a Switzerland-based, not-for-profit that claims no connection to “sporting or political powers” on its website. The ITA conducts testing for the Ironman organization from a pool of  as of this writing—which includes Chartier.

Coincidentally, Ironman said that 2023 is the first year the brand has delegated results management and prosecution of doping cases to the ITA. “Testing plans are based on a variety of factors and differ from individual athlete to individual athlete, with review of specific performances, intelligence, and the testing plans of National Anti-Doping agencies to maximize resources,” Ironman said in a statement.

“Ironman does acknowledge the significance of the decision made by Collin in promptly accepting responsibility for his actions.”

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Cheating! Everybody’s doing it! Or so one might assume based on recent headlines from the world of stationary sports. In the past few weeks alone, there’s been news of a fishing competition where with lead balls, as well as titillating accounts of and where the suspected culprits might have duped their opponents with secret vibration devices. One thing these diverse tales of deception had in common was that they brought national (and in some cases global) attention to sports that typically fly under the radar of mainstream coverage. In turns out that all you need for a chess match to “” is a compelling narrative about a vanquished grandmaster and some anal beads.

As someone who spends a fair amount of time writing about distance running, it was hard not to regard the drama in some of these other niche pursuits without experiencing a twinge of envy. For all their outlandishness, there was something refreshingly straightforward about these alleged offenses. In endurance sports, cheating stories almost invariably involve doping, a far more insidious kind of violation than, say, trying to smuggle weights into the bellies of walleyes. To understand the specifics of a typical rule infringement often demands being familiar with the World Anti Doping Agency’s , with its myriad sub-clauses and caveats. What’s more, doping violations can occasionally be so technical and seemingly arbitrary that even dedicated fans have a hard time keeping up.

Take the recent news that Kenya’s Diana Kipyokei, , had been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit after testing positive for triamcinolone acetonide, a form of glucocorticoid often used to treat inflammation. (The Boston Athletic Association has said that Kipyokei will be retroactively disqualified if her suspension is upheld.) Triamcinolone acetonide is only banned in competition when administered via injection, orally, or rectally. What’s more, local injections of glucocorticoids, which the are “commonly used as therapeutic substances in sports,” only became prohibited at the start of 2022 and can still be administered if the athlete obtains a Therapeutic Use Exemption. (Since we’re already deep in the weeds here, I might as well add that the triamcinolone acetonide depending on the route the substance takes into an athlete’s system and how many days before a competition it is last used: e.g. 30 days for oral ingestion, 60 days for intramuscular injection, but only ten days for an injection into a joint or tendon.)

None of this is meant to exonerate Kipyokei or her agent, Gianni Demadonna, who, for the record, claimed to have no knowledge of his athlete’s misdeeds in an . But her case is yet another reminder of how cheating in endurance sports often involves running afoul of a banal bureaucracy, whether wittingly or not. Even before he received a four-year ban for doping violations, one of the central criticisms of Alberto Salazar was that he was violating the “spirit of the rules,” by using TUEs in bad faith. Reading the details on triamcinolone acetonide, I was reminded of Salazar’s , another substance whose legality is contingent on the way it is administered and the dosage. Seen in this light, the difference between Kipyokei and some of Salazar’s athletes is that the latter were coached by a guy who was better at gaming the system.

In a recent , columnist Sally Jenkins makes the case that the difference between cheating and “performance enhancement” is perhaps more arbitrary than we like to admit. Her argument is that doping might be no more of an artificial advantage than the hyper-sophisticated use of technology and nutritional supplements that has become commonplace in professional sports. (She doesn’t mention super shoes, but she very well could have.) Anti-doping becomes particularly fraught, Jenkins argues, when a prohibited substance can also help counteract the physical wear-and-tear of high-level training. “What about the athlete who is simply trying to manage pain, speed recovery, or put on lean muscle to deal better with extreme demands?” Jenkins writes. “Is it so ethically wrong to minimize self-harm?”

Point taken. But this rationale doesn’t really fly when we’re talking about pain medication that might also boost your lactate threshold, to say nothing about the use of more blatant performance enhancers like EPO. In her piece, Jenkins also makes a provocative distinction between dopers and conventional cheats; she argues that a redeeming feature of the former group is that they are ultimately just looking to maximize their potential, which is the entire point of elite competition. Money quote: “Sports dopers are many things, but they aren’t lazy. They’re excessively driven.”

But the fact that you could say the same for athletes who don’t use any PEDs is a reminder that, unless we are going to advocate for the abolition of all doping regulations, we need to draw the line somewhere. That’s probably why I am more sympathetic towards WADA than someone like Jenkins, who has long been an of what she calls the “anti-doping movement.” WADA has the unenviable task of simultaneously trying to accommodate athletes who have legitimate cause for medical exemptions, while also not being outflanked by more cynical actors, like the Alberto Salazars of the world.

Anti-WADA sentiment sometimes sounds like wanting to shoot the messenger. In addition to the suspension of Kipyokei, at least ten other athletes from Kenya have been sanctioned in recent months, including Mark Kangogo, who won this year’s Sierre-Zinal, one of the world’s preeminent mountain races, and Lawrence Cherono, who won both the Boston and Chicago Marathons in 2019. Nobody gets any joy from seeing a race winner defrocked long after the fact––not the busted athlete, nor the champion-by-default who will always feel deprived of their moment of triumph.

It’s all very depressing. And enough to make you long for a world where a cheating conviction is as clear-cut as determining whether or not someone has a secret buzzer hiding in their ass.

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When Usain Bolt retired after the 2017 World Championships, it seemed like an ominous development for a sport that was already struggling to retain its relevance in non-Olympic years. Professional track was losing a global celebrity, a natural entertainer who possessed that rare combination of galactic talent and showmanship. Who would fill those size 13 spikes? In the 100-meter final at the championships in 2017, Bolt was beaten by a 35-year-old Justin Gatlin—an athlete whose previous doping bans —and Christian Coleman, the young American once hailed as Bolt’s successor who would soon be serving a . Professional men’s sprinting seemed to be in for a rough time.

Fortunately, however, this grim prognosis didn’t come to pass. Five years after Bolt’s retirement, we seem to be witnessing a new golden age of sprinting. On both the men’s and women’s side, a profusion of young (and not-so-young) talent has made previously untouchable records seem suddenly within reach. This is something worth celebrating. While regular readers of this column will know that I have an obvious bias for distance running, there’s no substitute for the distilled intensity of a race that is over in seconds, where tactics matter less than the marriage of perfect mechanics and raw ability. If you’ve been to a world-class track meet you’ll know that no event is as viscerally awesome as the sprints; to see such speed up close is to catch a glimpse of the sublime.

Right now, there might be no sprinter alive more talented than Erriyon Knighton, the phlegmatic teenager from Tampa, Florida, who over the course of the past year has broken Bolt’s under-18 and under-20 world records in the 200-meters. But while Knighton, who is six foot three, may be more Bolt-like in physique, the Jamaican idol’s obvious heir in terms of charisma is Noah Lyles, the current king of the 200. When he beat Knighton at the USATF championships this summer, Lyles a millisecond before breaking the tape in an act of delicious showboating that recalled some of Bolt’s more . Not to be outdone, last week 19-year-old Letsile Tebogo of Botswana set an under-20 world record for the men’s 100-meters despite wagging his finger at the competition once he knew he had it in the bag. The gesture, , was meant as a direct tribute to Bolt. Imagine how confident you have to be in your ability to engage in a premature celebration in a race that lasts less than ten seconds.

In any event, Lyles would save his most flamboyant celebration for after the race in the 200 at the World Championships in Eugene last month. After winning by a decisive margin, he seemed to be pleading with the race clock which had his time at 19.32—equaling Michael Johnson’s American record from 1996, the year before Lyles was born. When that was updated to 19.31, Lyles tore open his shirt in exaltation. I remember watching Johnson run 19.32 at the Atlanta Olympics. It was a huge world record at the time, one that no American sprinter had come close to matching before the present era. With Lyles and Knighton locked in a rivalry for years to come, even Bolt’s mythic world record of 19.19 could go down.

Bolt, of course, is the main reason why all of the major world records in men’s sprinting were set relatively recently. Not so on the women’s side, where most sprint records date back to the eighties—an era where out-of-competition drug testing had yet to be implemented. “Legally, they are the existing records,” World Athletics president in reference to untouchable performances like Florence-Griffith Joyner’s 100- and 200-meter marks from 1988, or the East German Marita Koch’s 400-meter record from 1985, “but they may not be the safest records on the book.” This is Coe being diplomatic about a longstanding conundrum for women’s track and field: What do you do if many records are believed to be dirty, but when you are never going to have definitive proof? In recent years, several people have . It’s a practical solution, but not an ideal one. Coe himself has stated that he would prefer that new records happen “organically.”

He has reason to be optimistic. For the first time ever, some of those stratospheric times from the eighties look genuinely attainable. At last year’s Pre Classic, Elaine Thompson-Herah won the 100-meters in 10.54, a mere 0.05 seconds off the world record from ’88. And at this summer’s World Championships, Thompson-Herah’s fellow Jamaican Shericka Jackson won the 200-meters in 21.45, putting her at number two all-time behind FloJo’s 21.34.

Of course, when it comes to preposterous sprint records, no athlete has done more of late than Sydney McLaughlin, the 23-year-old American who over the past year has repeatedly broken her own world record in the 400 hurdles. Her absurd personal best of 50.68 has inspired speculation about what she might be able to do in the “regular” 400, sans barriers. Assuming that she (or her coach) gets bored of eviscerating the competition (on Monday, by nearly three seconds) there’s a chance that McLaughlin might try to take down Koch’s 47.60 from 1985. To be clear, the chances of breaking that record are slim; with the possible exception of in the 800-meters, Koch’s time is surely the most untouchable record in track and field. But if anyone can do it, it’s McLaughlin.

None of which is to suggest that improving on the old, dubious records will be some kind of panacea for track and field. Skeptics will point out that, modern drug testing notwithstanding, we some halcyon post-doping era. If anything, we are in a moment where advances in shoe technology have added another layer to the discussion about the ; catching surreptitious steroid users is one thing, but now we also get to argue about potentially illicit forms of energy return.

Fortunately, in the sprints such arguments about shoe-tech inspired “mechanical doping” haven’t been as prevalent as in the distance events. Karsten Warholm, the Norwegian gold medalist in the 400-meter hurdles, all the hype about the propulsive effect of Nike’s super spikes “takes credibility away from our sport.” But Warholm, who is a Puma athlete, might just be sticking up for his sponsor in a sport where contracts from major footwear brands are still athletes’ main source of income.

at the World Championships, Lyles made it clear that, at least as far as his sponsor Adidas was concerned, he was an influencer first and an athlete second. “Originally I thought my job was to run,” Lyles said. “No, your job is to sell shoes. And the more you do it, the more they will pay you.”

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Or would it havc been?

American cycling packs a controversial legacy with the Tour and the yellow jersey, and that’s putting it mildly.

Five Americans have worn the prized tunic across Tour history, but four of them have seen their legacies tainted by outright bans or doping admissions that put an asterisk on their ±èČč±ôłŸČč°ùĂ©Čő.

Four have seen their names struck from the official record of yellow jersey holders.

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, the first American to win the Tour, is the only rider among the quintet whose legacy remains untarnished and is the only U.S. racer whose stints in the yellow jersey remain in the official Tour-backed history books.

, David Zabriskie, George Hincapie and all wore yellow, but all four no longer appear as yellow jerseys in the official Tour history.

Some of their exploits, including stage wins and appearances, remain on the official register if deemed to have occurred before or after their admitted doping practices.

All four of their yellow jersey runs, however, have been deleted due to doping positives and doping admissions.

Armstrong wore the yellow jersey for 83 days during his career, and that was second on the race all-time list. But his Tour record of seven-consecutive Tour wins from 1999 to 2005 was erased in the wake of the 2012 U.S. Anti-doping  case that peeled back the depths of cheating during late 1990s and early 2000s.

Despite decades of other doping scandals at the Tour, Armstrong is the only former Tour winner whose name has been retroactively removed from the race’s official results in race history.

The official record for most victories now stands at five, a mark held by four riders: Frenchmen Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, plus Belgian Eddy Merckx, and Spaniard Miguel Indurain.

Other former Tour winners who later admitted to doping, or who were linked to doping scandals, including Denmark’s Bjarne Riis, German Jan Ullrich, and Italian Marco Pantani, still remain on the race’s official list of winners.

Landis won the 2006 Tour, but he was disqualified in the days following the Paris ceremony when anti-doping controls revealed he tested positive for testosterone. Because his doping ban occurred in real time, his name was officially struck from results sheet, with Spanish rider Óscar Pereiro being awarded the victory.

In contrast, the years coinciding with Armstrong’s seven Tours remain vacant on the official results sheet and without official winners.

Hincapie and Zabriskie also held yellow during their respective careers. Zabriskie wore yellow after winning the opening time trial in the 2005 Tour with a team directed and managed by Riis. Hincapie donned yellow in stage 1 early in the 2006 Tour.

Both riders later confessed to doping at periods throughout their respective careers. Like Armstrong, their results and their respective stints in yellow have been removed from the official results sheet.

Since 2006, American riders have struggled to match the exuberant success of the Armstrong era to win stages or hit the yellow jersey. Armstrong was within a fraction of a second of snatching yellow in his comeback Tour in 2009, but he lost out on the jersey based on tie-breaker rules, which granted Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara the honor.

Then-teammate Alberto Contador later attacked Armstrong in the Pyrénées, and the pair battled all the way to Paris, with Contador winning and Armstrong finishing third in one of the most notorious Tours in history.

Armstrong’s podium that year was also erased by the Tour organization as part of the USADA decision, and he retired in early 2011 under a growing cloud of controversy.

Greg LeMond’s Legacy

Since then, Tejay van Garderen was the American who came closest to yellow in stage 2 in 2018. Teammate Greg van Avermaet crossed the line just ahead of second-place Van Garderen in a team time trial to wear yellow.

Van Garderen twice finished fifth in the Tour, and retired in 2021 without coming that close to yellow again.

Powless’s fourth-place in stage 5 is the best stage result so far by an American in the 2022 Tour. Tyler Farrar of Washington State won a stage in the 2011 Tour, and he was the last American to win a Tour stage until Sepp Kuss bounded to victory last year in Andorra.

Powless came close to yellow. On Wednesday, only a late chase kept Belgium’s Wout van Aert in yellow after Powless rode into the day’s winning breakaway, and he climbed to second at 13 seconds back.

Powless started Thursday’s stage nine seconds ahead of Tadej Pogačar, who won stage 6 and climbed into yellow thanks to time bonuses. Powless started Friday’s seventh stage in second overall at four seconds overall.

Had Pogačar not won Thursday, Powless would have been in yellow since he finished on the same time as the two-time Tour champion.

So is LeMond the last—and only—American to wear yellow?

LeMond wore the yellow jersey for 22 days during his Tour history. He won the race outright in 1986, 1989 and 1990. Early in the 1991 Tour, LeMond donned the maillot jaune for five days, and he never got it back.

If doping admissions and bans are the threshold, the first, last, and only American to wear yellow is still Greg LeMond.

The post Just One American Has Worn the Tour de France‘s Yellow Jersey, According to the Race’s Official Record appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

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U.S. cyclocross great  pushed back on  from the U.S. Anti-doping agency that she had tested positive for a banned anabolic agent in 2020.

In a statement issued to the press, Compton, 42, said she had never knowingly or intentionally put a banned anabolic steroid into her body—a statement that contradicts the USADA statement on her. Compton also said she was ending her professional career in the wake of the news, and that she was stepping away from the sport.

“Ending my career this way is simply soul-crushing,” Compton wrote. “It physically hurts and makes me incredibly sad.”

On Wednesday USADA published a statement saying that Compton had accepted a four-year ban after a sample taken in September, 2020, tested positive for a banned anabolic agent after it was analyzed using a Carbon Isotope Ratio test, which is reportedly able to detect natural anabolic agents and those introduced from outside of the body.

Compton pushed back on the USADA report, saying that she was initially informed that her sample from September, 2020 returned a negative result. Compton said that in early 2021 she was informed that the same sample had returned a positive result for exogenous anabolic steroids.

“This was devastating news to me as I have never intentionally or knowingly put anything like that into my body,” Compton wrote. “I know how delicate women’s hormones are, and I would never choose to take anything to jeopardize my health and, as a result, suffer irreparable damage to my endocrine system. And not only that, I never took anything for ethical and moral reasons; I’ve been a strong proponent of clean sport my entire career and feel doing anything to enhance one’s own natural ability is cheating, full stop.”

Compton said she hired a lawyer in March in an attempt to defend herself, but that she was unsuccessful in finding out how the banned substance got into her system. She said that she has decided to stop fighting the legal battle, and has instead accepted the sanction due to the expenses involved with the legal battle.

“So, it is with great stress and sorrow that I’ve ended my competitive career,” Compton wrote. “My friends and family know how much I’m against doping and know it is a topic in which I have always been outspoken. This news is gut-wrenching to me and the worst period I’ve ever experienced during my life so far. I’ve processed all the emotions over the past year and realized that I don’t need bike racing in my life anymore. I still love riding my bike and enjoying that with friends, but I have no desire to ever race or be competitive again, which is probably good since the sanction includes a four-year ban from competition.”

Compton is the most decorated U.S. cyclocross racer ever, with 15 elite national titles and a collection of World Cup victories and world championships medals.

Katie Compton’s full statement below:

This news comes with great heartache and sadness, and it is the worst possible way to end my cycling career. I need to preface this news with the fact that I have always been a clean athlete, and I am proud of how much I have accomplished racing clean and being very careful with whatever I put into my body, especially after dealing with so many health issues throughout my life.

I provided a sample for USADA in September 2020 that came back negative for any banned substances, it was not even atypical. That news was communicated to me in the same way it has always been via a letter from USADA. I’ve received that same letter after every test I’ve submitted for the last 19 years. In early February of 2021, after returning from a difficult race season, I learned that the same sample from September was re-analyzed due to a bio-passport irregularity and found to be positive for an exogenous anabolic steroid. This was devastating news to me as I have never intentionally or knowingly put anything like that into my body. I know how delicate women’s hormones are, and I would never choose to take anything to jeopardize my health and, as a result, suffer irreparable damage to my endocrine system. And not only that, I never took anything for ethical and moral reasons; I’ve been a strong proponent of clean sport my entire career and feel doing anything to enhance one’s own natural ability is cheating, full stop.

Despite deciding to retire in March, I also felt the need to try and defend myself and my reputation. I hired a lawyer and did my best to investigate how the substance got into my system but was unsuccessful in finding that answer. Over the past six months, I learned that I cannot prove that I didn’t intentionally take anything, and I can’t afford to keep fighting knowing the outcome will be the same regardless. Unfortunately, seeing that it was five months between the sample collection and the notification, trying to figure what allegedly got into my body proved to be impossible, and I have decided to stop fighting an expensive and difficult battle and accept the sanction.

So, it is with great stress and sorrow that I’ve ended my competitive career. My friends and family know how much I’m against doping and know it is a topic in which I have always been outspoken. This news is gut-wrenching to me and the worst period I’ve ever experienced during my life so far. I’ve processed all the emotions over the past year and realized that I don’t need bike racing in my life anymore. I still love riding my bike and enjoying that with friends, but I have no desire to ever race or be competitive again, which is probably good since the sanction includes a four-year ban from competition.

I wanted to share this news prior to USADA releasing it to the public so you hear it from me first. I’m obviously stepping away from the competitive cycling world for the next few years and don’t know what my future within the sport may look like post sanction, but I want people to know that I’ll miss the racing community, specifically all the amazing people I’ve met along the way who simply share the love of riding bikes. I’ll always cherish the experiences and wonderful adventures cycling has given me while also acknowledging that it has brought me plenty of heartache and disappointment, and I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted. Ending my career this way is simply soul-crushing. It physically hurts and makes me incredibly sad.

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