Anti-Doping sanctions are strict and can seriously undermine or end the career of an athlete. The anti-doping lawyers at Tyr are regularly retained to respond to alleged anti-doping rule violations (or “ADRVs”).
Due to advances in technology, anti-doping authorities can detect trace levels of prohibited substances in an athlete's sample. When testing is so sensitive, it becomes increasingly likely that athletes who are not intentionally doping will test positive from accidental contamination or exposure to a prohibited substance.
Other common unintentional anti-doping violations include athletes taking medications for genuine therapeutic reasons as directed by trainers or prescribed by doctors, including in emergency situations such as following an on-field injury.
In all cases, athletes face an uphill battle because the strict liability rules create a presumption that the athlete has intentionally cheated and result in lengthy periods of suspension unless challenged.
A common misconception among younger or inexperienced athletes is that you must ingest a prohibited substance to commit an anti-doping rule violation. The anti-doping rules provide for a variety of different ways in which an athlete can commit an ADRV. They include (but are not limited to) possessing prohibited substances, evading anti-doping testing when required, attempting to manipulate test results, and whereabouts failures.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (“WADA”) is an international foundation that is responsible for overseeing the international anti-doping movement. Most of WADA's policies, procedures, and regulations are adopted by and enforced at the national level through national anti-doping regulations and agencies, such as the United States Anti-Doping Agency (“USADA”) and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (“CCES”).
Tyr Sports regularly represents athletes accused of committing an ADRV. Our anti-doping work and experience includes cases involving meat products or nutritional supplements contaminated with prohibited substances, environmental contamination cases, situations involving medications consumed for therapeutic purposes which contain prohibited substances (including Therapeutic Use Exemption applications), and whereabouts failures cases. It is always recommended that an athlete seek competent and dedicated legal counsel such as Tyr's team of anti-doping lawyers to deal with alleged rule violations.