US Racer Katie Compton Banned for 4 Years After Testing Postive for Anabolic Agent
Compton racing at the Scott Enduro Cup by Vittoria in Klondike Bluffs, Moab, 2015. Photo: Enduro Cup.
US racer Katie Compton has been banned for four years following an adverse analytical finding for an anabolic agent.
Compton, 42, is best known as a cyclocross racer and is a 15x US Cyclocross Champion, a 4x silver medallist at the CX World Championships and a 2x CX World Cup overall winner but she also races mountain bikes including taking two wins at the Scott Enduro Cup in Utah and a second place at a Big Mountain Enduro round in Vail, Colorado.
A statement released by USADA, the US Anti Doping Agency, confirms that Katie has accepted her suspension following an out-of-competition drug test on September 16, 2020. Her urine sample was analyzed using a specialized test, known as Carbon Isotope Ratio testing, that differentiates between anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) naturally produced by the body and prohibited anabolic agents of external origin. Anabolic agents are prohibited in and out of competition and have powerful performance-enhancing capabilities and can give an athlete an unfair advantage over fellow competitors.
In a statement, Compton denied having taken banned substances and said that the test had effectively ended her career. She said:
 | 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. |
Compton's suspension has been backdated to September 16 2020 and any results she has had since then have been stripped. For more info, head to Cycling Tips.
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He broke the rules so he was still suspended but this was all taken into consideration.
www.cyclocosm.com/2021/08/the-comptons-god-awful-response-to-katies-positive-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-this-case
Make no mistake, this was targeted post-hoc testing based on biopassport irregularities (and potentially other information).
An entire career in question.
No one should be surprised. It's cycling, after all. Better to not know how the sausage is made.
Letting everyone dope presents a less level playing field across the board than when only some dope.
Also, 1/2 is too conservative. Probably more like 2/3 at the top end.
They all dope and everyone knew it.
What was interesting and eye opening to see was that when they stripped Lance of all his TDF wins, they couldn't award those wins to any of the top 5 riders because all of them had Doping violations as well. It is/was laughable.
I can go down to Mexico today (I live in San Diego ) and get any drug I wanted without a Script. Steroids, EPO, Growth Hormone, You name it, someone or pharmacy is willing to sell it to you.
I think pro cycling is already an incredibly hard sport; if it legalized taking drugs that might make you faster while also maybe killing you, it'd just turn into a total bloodsport with dudes dropping dead halfway up climbs.
If it's under 5/8ths I be shocked.
Do what they do in Body Building. They have the Worlds and then They have the Natural Worlds.
Have a Clean TDF and a not clean TDF. For entertainment value, i will watch the Not clean event all day long!
O only watch this sports for the entertainment value. I don’t care what these people are on, just give me a good show.
For DH racing, there is not much to be gained other than pedaling power on the flat parts. Enduro ot benefits then much more with recovery and pedalling up hill. XC is like Road Riding so if you were foing to aee doping it would be woth this group
I bet there would be a few volunteers for a study on that though.
I was talking to a buddy about “performance enhancing drugs” in other industries
Coke- is the business mans performance enhancer- “ the Wolf of Wall Street”is no joke and still happens today
LSD, Heroin, etc… are the song writer and musicians performance enhancer. Do you thing “the Doors” or “Nirvana” or “enter and band name here”, music and songwriting would be as good as it is without drugs???
Weed- calms nerves and relaxes people (mostly)
Truck drivers- lots of Uppers and Come in that industry
And the list goes on.
And for those of you who say they are. Or competing against other , they most certainly are. Competing for jobs, competing for record/music contracts etc….
Are you new to cycling? Or sport in general?
but maybe some of these people just got lots of cash and this is an expensive hobby, I can only speculate.
Best article I've seen so far condemning the Comptons. Katie and her Husband were not aligned at all on their responses (Husband Mark Legg ranted on Facebook)
www.cyclocosm.com/2021/08/the-comptons-god-awful-response-to-katies-positive-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-this-case
This has to be the largest dopping bust since Tyler, Lance and Floyd. I hope the USADA details the investigation to who provided these substances?
"performance-enhancing capabilities and can give an athlete an unfair advantage over fellow competitors."
So can being a male most of your life and then competing against women, but that's good.
If you're trying to imply that your daughter was not in fact shrek as a relevant counterpoint to my post then I'm afraid the point has been missed.
Anyway, no need for an explanation from you. I wasn't pining for a debate with a partially literate troll who defaults to insults, nor do I need your game explained. There were however 20 other people who downvoted the original, some of whom may have the intelligence to form an intelligent (and intelligible) response. Now run along.
I mean, I also wouldn't race cyclocross, so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about...but it seems to me if I were a clean competition advocate, I'd probably also be super transparent about all the stuff I did to train legally. Money where you mouth is vibe.
So strange, every time.
If your whole career is gonne be wiped anyways, why not go full guns blazing?
You see this kind of "defeatist yet cagey" behaviour in criminal defendants who fully well know they've done wrong and have realized that they probably won't get away with it this time.
I'd post every piece of correspondence on a blog. I'd use code EBIKESRULE for two months free hosting from GoWaki dot com.
That's what I'd do. Or at least what I'd like to think I'd do.
This article includes a statement from Katie saying that she has tried to figure out how the substance could have gotten into her system and cannot figure it out. Maybe she does have an 888 day eating log, this article doesn't cover that one way or the other.
The real BS in my opinion is that the retesting seems as though it was triggered by a different test, that hasn't been well researched for it's applicability to women, but some studies show that there is a higher amount of fluctuations in women than men.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/7/622/pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiw-ajo8K7yAhVDrZ4KHVnYASwQFnoECAMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3s8JtvffpE5uUGJ1q_Nceb
I'm gonna go back to not watching cyclocross now.
..... You don't pay her.!
"...and unbeknownst to me, my Grandma made organic crackers for our lunch and she must have included some anabolic androgenic steroid too. At her age, it's easy to mistake it for garlic.
This is the whole concept of a bio passport. They can track an athlete's normal range and not just use a number for the entire population as "standard". If the athlete falls out of that normal range during testing, something is probably up either with their health or doping.
Steroids produced in a lab a, lack stable heavy isotopes or b, contain odd amounts of stable heavy isotopes.
You can measure the isotope inclusion using a high resolution mass spectrometer. The ideal machine for this work was only recently released by Thermo. A well setup analysis of this type will produce an unequivocal result.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/7/622/pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiw-ajo8K7yAhVDrZ4KHVnYASwQFnoECAMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3s8JtvffpE5uUGJ1q_Nceb
The research that has been done to see how the bio passport test works with women shows that it is less reliable.
Clearly they need to expand the number of elite sports women on the passport scheme to improve it. The men's scheme has a lot more data to fall back on.
I guess I read it that way, but yes if they are allowing for a larger range of acceptable values with women it is likely still a fairly useful tool. The paper made it sound like hormonal fluctuations could throw off that test however, and since typically almost all research is done with men, it seemed reasonable that this test would give bad results for at least some women.
I'm not saying she is innocent of taking supplements that aided her to her success in cycling, but if a biased test was used to trigger a test that detected very low levels then that is pretty terrible. Maybe results will be made a available later that shows a high level of steroid that is impossible to attribute to contamination, until then people should withhold judgement.
Firstly, I'd like to know what the concentration was. You see the testing equipment is so sensitive these days that you can test 'positive' at extremely low levels. Some years ago I tested positive to Hep C with a reading of 0.0000009 part per whatever. This caused a panic with the testers as people with Hep C should have a reading of, say 5.0 to 9.0, some millions of times higher than my reading. Their new process was WAY too sensitive. I didn't have Hep C but I did test positive to it.
In Australia you can test positive for alcohol while driving, but only if the concentration of alcohol in he blood is over 0.05% are you arrested. On the other hand, if you test positive for marijuana (tongue swab), you are charged even though you may haven't had a toke for several days and are fine to drive. There's no set level for dope, but there is for booze. This is wrong.
For WADA, USADA, ASADA etc. ANY reading, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, is a positive result.
We know for a fact that the Canadian canoeist Laurence Vincent Lapointe tested 'positive' with an ultra-low reading because she was able to prove that her soccer-playing boyfriend was on Ligandrol. Similarly, Shayna Jack, the Australian swimmer, has never been given her reading, which means it could be 0.00000008 type scenario - she tested negative very frequently and then one day tests positive (how an athlete cannot be given their own results of their own blood is astounding to me). By last year Shayna has spent $130,000 on her legal fight, so it's very plausible that Kate, at the end of her career, knows it ain't worth it. It is worth it to Shayna as she could make millions as a successful (and let's face it, cute and marketable) swimmer in Australia. Travis Tygart, whose name you should also know from the Lance Armstrong event, is one of the greatest anti-doping proponents of all time, is against the 'any reading is positive. Experiments have shown that you can test positive by merely brushing up against someone who has been using drugs.
Pretend Kate is someone you've been riding with for ten years. If one of the girl-racers I ride with tested positive, they'd get a hug first and then I'd shut the eff up.
If a girl racer I ride with tested postitive, I'd stop riding with them and wonder what else they've been bullshitting about.
NB: I don't actually ride with girl racers
www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-08/shayna-jacks-fight-against-doping-ban/13061456
Trust me, I get the point you are making.
Or maaybe the saying people in glass houses shouldnt throw stone
www.cxmagazine.com/katie-compton-positive-steroid-testosterone-ban-usada-cir-explained
Also, any cause and effect relationships? Or something more specific?
The modeling comparison is a bad argument. No one said that genetics don't play a role in sports or modeling. You can't turn an average cyclist into an elite cyclist just from drugs, but at the top level, you shouldn't be forced to do it either.
Not the same as being forced. I don't know about you, but to me forced means they would be physically restrained and the PEDs administered against their will.
I very much doubt that is happening. If that's not happening, they're not being forced. Therefore they are doing it by choice. If they choose not to do the PEDs, they probably won't make it as an endurance athlete. That doesn't preclude them from making it at something else. There are lots of other jobs available, most of which are a lot more worthwhile than being an athlete - essentially a living advert for someone to peddle their wares from the back of.
It always amuses me when people consciously choose a career and then piss and moan about how it's not fair for them to do that career. If you choose to be a prostitute, you're going to get f*cked. If you choose to be a copper, you're going to occasional see dead teenagers in car crashes. If you're going to be a barman, you're going to encounter drunks. If y9ie going to be an endurance athlete, you're going to take PEDs. The two go hand in hand. If you don't like it, don't. Just choose to do something else, it's not a big deal.