Ban on certain supplements a little late for footballer Brendan O’Sullivan

You would not believe the lengths of research we go to in here to protect our readers from the inadvertent consumption of banned substances. All the way down to our local health food shop in Dundrum, to be exact, whereas of lunchtime on Friday the Falcon Labs fat-burning supplement Oxy Burn Pro was no longer available.

It had been purchased there last summer for previous research purposes (the unopened container is still at home): they no longer stock the Falcon Labs brand, although possibly not recognising I have no fat left to burn, they recommended a couple of alternative products. I said I’d get back to them.

Around lunchtime on Thursday, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) had recalled the entire range of Falcon Labs supplements after discovering they contain traces of stimulants and steroids, which although not listed on the product packaging are both banned in sport and also carry a risk to health.

This came a little late for Kerry footballer Brendan O’Sullivan, and yet it turns out he could be among the lucky ones.

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Last May it emerged that O’Sullivan had failed a Sport Ireland anti-doping test, going back to April 2016, which he later blamed on the consumption of the Falcon Labs Oxy Burn Pro, one of the supplements now specifically identified by the FSAI as being “contaminated” with the banned stimulants and steroids.

Black market

Oxy Burn Pro was found to contain traces of methylhexaneamine (MHA), the banned substance which O’Sullivan tested positive for, while another Falcon Labs product, Superdrive, contained traces of methasterone, an orally active anabolic-androgenic steroid, which has never been authorised as a medicine but has been previously sold on the black market under the name Superdrol. It’s also on the banned substances list, in and out of competition.

"There are other products under that brand, and we are suspicious about them all," Ray Ellard of the FSAI told RTÉ's Radio News at One. "Because we also can't find where they are manufactured. And they have stimulants and steroids which have no place in food."

The FSAI were also unable to trace the exact source of the products, although still available online and in select food supplement shops in Ireland: hence the assumption the supplements aren’t actually “contaminated” with the banned substances but simply supplied with them.

Had O’Sullivan gone for the Superdrive he might have been watching from the sidelines for four years.

Like boxer Michael O’Reilly now is, after he also failed an anti-doping test in 2016 on the eve of Rio Olympics, and likewise blamed his positive on a “contaminated” supplement: the difference being it was a banned steroid, methandienone, rather than a specified stimulant, and with that Sport Ireland applied the maximum four-year sanction.

Suspension

O’Sullivan ended up serving a reduced suspension of just 21 weeks, having successfully argued a case of inadvertently consuming the substance. In the full reasoned decision regarding his case, he explained he took the supplement for fat-burning reasons only, believing it to be no different to the caffeine supplements already being supplied to the Kerry football team.

Because MHA was not disclosed on the label, or in a reasonable internet search which he asserted he had carried out before taking the product, it was considered “contaminated”. (The Oxy Burn Pro label does claim to “dramatically improve the rate in which body fat is burnt as well as providing a huge increase in explosive energy levels.”)

MHA, by the way, has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (Wada) prohibited stimulant list since 2004, although reclassified as “a specified substance” in 2011. Wada defines “specified substances” as those that can “enter an athlete’s body inadvertently and therefore allow a tribunal more flexibility when making a sanctioning decision”.

In their other notes on the case Sport Ireland claimed “Falcons Labs Oxy Burn Pro doesn’t sound like a caffeine supplement and he should have been naturally sceptical of such a supplement”.

And therein lies another warning because it took 13 months before Sport Ireland identified the product which resulted in the positive test – to protect the identity of the player until the anti-doping case was concluded – despite the obvious risk of other players, athletes, boxers, etc also testing positive for the “contaminated” supplement.

And it took another 10 months before the FSAI recalled the brand.

Blood tests

This also happened to coincide with Sport Ireland’s 2017 anti-doping review, published around lunchtime on Thursday, which reports that of the 989 tests conducted last year across 22 sports, including 318 blood tests and 671 urine tests, only one has come back positive though is still pending – and he/she may well be one of the unlucky ones.

Again neither the identity of the individual nor the sport is being revealed until the anti-doping case is concluded, and going by recent test cases this could drag on and on (the O’Reilly case was only concluded late last month). All we know for now is that it was for a banned substance, taken in-competition, quite possibly inadvertently consumed too.

Again Sport Ireland has a bit of a balancing act here: on one hand to protect the identity of the player/athlete, while on the other hand ensuring no other player/athlete is subjected to a similar risk of a positive test.

By their own admission half our high-performance athletes and players are now using supplements, while at the same time studies are repeatedly showing that supplements can be “contaminated” with ingredients not listed on the label: one 2013 study suggested around 10 per cent of supplements manufactured by leading European sports brands contained traces of banned anabolic steroids.

For something that costs €1.75 million annually, maybe Sport Ireland’s anti-doping programme could include a specific brand warning against the inadvertent consumption of banned substances, especially when we still can’t trust what it says on the label.