There have been some highly unusual reasons given by sports stars down the years after they have been found to have breached anti-doping rules.
One of the most bizarre was from Spanish 20km walker Daniel Plaza, who in 1996 revealed more details of his sex life with his pregnant wife than either may have wished for after he’d returned a positive steroid test. Nandrolone, he argued, is produced naturally by pregnant women.
That story and more sprang to mind on the day Goncalo Oliveira, a Portuguese-born player who represents Venezuela, was handed a four-year suspension by the International Tennis Integrity Agency after offering a bizarre reason for his failed test.
The 30-year-old was provisionally suspended in January after testing positive for methamphetamine in November last year at a ATP Tour Challenger event in Manzanillo, Mexico. Both A and B samples given by the athlete returned positive results when tested.
He then, according to The Athletic, requested that a woman provide a witness statement. Her name is redacted in the report but she testified that she had met Oliveira in a bar and they ‘ended up kissing’ after she had ‘consumed a pill which made me feel euphoria, agitation, confidence to socialise and in the moment a a feeling of energy and joy’.
The Athletic report that she later confirmed the account but wouldn’t say what the drug was. Oliveira also testified that they had spent a good deal of time kissing at the bar, but failed to convince the Integrity Agency.
Tennis star Goncalo Oliveira has been banned for four years after returning a positive test for methamphetamine
The star blamed the positive test on a meeting with a woman at a bar, who he kissed
He later requested a tribunal hearing but they ruled that, on the balance of probabilities, Oliveira did not successfully prove that kissing was the source of amphetamine contamination, and upheld the ITIA’s four-year ban.
He will be able to resume playing at the start of 2029 given that he has already served some of suspension.
In 2009, French tennis star Richard Gasquet successfully appealed against a suspension for cocaine use after he said it was the result of kissing a woman in a Miami nightclub.
