A positive doping test after sex? French fencing ace has an unusual explanation

World champion returned a positive test for ostarine at a World Cup event in January - but says she can explain

France's Ysaora Thibus at the Fencing World Championships in Milan.

French world fencing champion Ysaora Thibus has blamed sexual contact with her fiancé for causing her positive test for ostarine.

Thibus (32), was a silver medallist in women’s team foil at the Tokyo Olympics and won the individual world title in 2022, but her participation at the Paris games is in serious doubt after she returned a positive test for ostarine at a World Cup event in January. She is provisionally suspended until the case is resolved.

Her lawyer told L’Equipe that the drug probably entered her system through her partner, Race Imboden, a retired US fencer who is said to have used a product containing ostarine and contaminated Thibus through the exchange of “bodily fluids”.

British sprinter CJ Ujah tested positive for ostarine at the Tokyo Olympics, which led to his team being stripped of their 4x100m silver medals. The drug is a selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) which has similar effects to steroids.

As far-fetched as it may sound, Thibus’s explanation is plausible and there is precedent for athletes being acquitted once they demonstrate, on the balance of probabilities, that a positive test was caused by contamination.

In 2020, Canada’s canoeing world champion Laurence Vincent Lapointe was acquitted after demonstrating that the banned substance ligandrol – also a SARM – had entered her body via her boyfriend. She went on to win two medals at the Tokyo Olympics after the International Canoe Federation accepted that the trace levels in her system were caused by third-party contamination.

US softball player Madilyn Nickles was also acquitted after a positive test for ligandrol, with the US Anti-Doping Agency stating: “During a thorough investigation into the circumstances of Nickles’s case, USADA determines that Nickles’ male partner was using therapeutic doses of LGD-4033 and the low amount of LGD-4033 metabolite detected in her urine sample was consistent with recent exposure to LGD-4033 via sexual transmission.” 

US sprint star Dennis Mitchell is among those who unsuccessfully tried to use sex as a doping defence. After being found with unusually high levels of testosterone in his system in 1998, he claimed it was due to drinking six bottles of beer and having sex with his wife four times the night before the test. “It was her birthday, the lady deserved a treat,” said Mitchell. The world governing body of athletics, IAAF, didn’t buy it, banning him for two years.

French tennis player Richard Gasquet escaped a ban in 2009 after a positive test for cocaine, claiming he ingested it from kissing a woman in a nightclub.