Elite athletes have been issued an unusual but urgent warning: steer clear of one-night stands or risk failing a drug test. At a high-profile anti-doping summit, leading sports lawyers and experts unpacked a growing trend of athletes being caught in doping scandals due to intimate encounters, particularly in the Tinder era where fleeting hookups are harder to trace back.
Mark Hovell, a top sports lawyer and the independent chair in tennis star Jannik Sinner’s anti-doping case, cited a notorious example: French tennis player Richard Gasquet, who tested positive for cocaine in 2009. Gasquet was later cleared after successfully arguing that the substance entered his system when he kissed a woman in a nightclub.
“Gasquet managed to get her to come and give evidence to say: ‘Yes, I’m a cocaine addict. I use cocaine,’” said Hovell. “‘I kissed him in this nightclub.’ But with a one-night stand, how are you going to be able to find that person again? That’s the problem.”
When moderator Jacqui Oatley asked if athletes needed to at least get a phone number to protect themselves, Hovell didn’t flinch: “They might not have the evidence they need.”
US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) chief Travis Tygart backed Hovell’s view, referencing the case of American boxer Virginia Fuchs in 2020. Fuchs tested positive for banned substances but was exonerated after proving the metabolites came from sexual transmission via her male partner.
“I think based on the cases we’ve seen, watch who you kiss and watch out who you have an intimate relationship with,” Tygart told delegates at the Sports Resolutions conference.
He urged the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) to act fast by raising the threshold for trace substances like clostabal and ostarine, compounds that can be passed through sexual contact. Without such reforms, athletes risk bans for minuscule amounts they may not have knowingly ingested.
“I think it’s a pretty ridiculous world we’re expecting our athletes to live in,” Tygart said. “Which is why we’re pushing to try to change these rules to make it more reasonable and fair.”
He added, “The onus is always on the athletes. We as anti-doping organisations need to take some of that responsibility back. And I worry how many of the intentional cheats are actually getting away because we’re spending so much time and resources on the cases that end up being someone kissing someone at a bar.”